Combining Travel and Genealogy

Writing in the Wichita Eagle, Mary Ann Anderson has written about places that you should see in your lifetime. The article is full of references to Kenya's Maasai Mara (a game preserve within the grassy plains of the Great Serengeti region), riding a camel to see the Pyramids at sunrise, paragliding over the Alps, floating down the Nile and experiencing the gastronomical delights of Paris.

However, she also quotes Tom, a public relations expert from Connecticut. Tom says that his favorite travel moments come from combining travel and genealogy. "It's impossible to put into words what these experiences are like, but there's an exhilaration that you'll never experience from simply reading about your family history. It brings travel to a uniquely personal level, and it helps forge a real sense of connection with your past."

You can read the article at http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/living/14573589.htm.

Comments

[Paul K. Graham]

Tom's comment in the article is so true. I make it a point to visit the places my ancestors lived. It gives me a lot better perspective on their life. Especially in rural America, the places where my ancestors lived have not changed all that much in 150-250 years.

From a research perspective, visiting the places where my ancestors lived has provided significant amounts of clarity to the place names I use. When I first started, my database was full of "Alabama" or "Georgia" or "South Carolina" place names. Now I have specific counties, towns, creeks, and other descriptors that are a tremendous help, especially when I need to know if one family was related to another or not.

[Bart Hansen]

One of my favorite genealogy trips took us to the port of Hull in the north of England. Hull is where the immigrants from Scandinavia stopped on their way to North America in the last half of the 19th century. From Hull they took a train to Liverpool and then on to America. At the old train station in Hull there still stands the Immigrant Waiting Room on a siding away from the main lines. It was a thrill to walk upon the same old lichen-covered stones where two sets of my great grandparents stood so long ago.

[Lydia Joy Chichester, Lakewood, CO]

What a thrill it was to literally uncover the flat grave marker of my great-grandparents, tearing off the grass that had covered it for years! I had traveled to Columbus, MS to learn their identity and ended with finding their gravesite in Friendship Cemetery. Eighteen months later I contacted a family researcher who had spent years looking for the descendants of Henry Austin McCracken. Well, here I am, and I found his grave!

[Glenda Lloyd]

My husband was born in England. He came to America as a baby with his parents. They settled in Grass Valley where the entire extended family worked in the gold mines doing hard-rock mining as they had done in Cornwall. Our research took us to many family-related places in England. It was like walking in the footsteps of time to sit in the same parish church and peruse the parish registers where their names were recorded. Adding photography to the travel and genealogy enriches the memories.