I was just watching something on PBS about the Flying Scotsman and rail travel and it got me thinking about this. My grandparents on my dad’s side were both Scottish and my mom’s parents were English and Swedish. I have made a point of visiting all of these places and it was emotional at times. Husband is Scottish, English, Dutch, and German. We have been to all there as well. I connected with a second cousin in Scotland through Ancestry and we are Facebook friends. She seems quite interesting!
Do you think much about any of this and your history? Have you been to places where your family was originally from, whether Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Australia, etc? Is it a goal at all to do so if you haven’t already done so?
I was the first person on either side of my family to be born in the US so yes, I’ve been back to my parents’ home countries often, and made it a point to make sure my D got back too.
We haven’t visited, but want to. Number one on my list was ShangHai because my grandfather is buried there. Would have been combined with a trip to Thailand and maybe Japan as DH lived in both places.
His family ancestors are from Wales and Ireland…both would be great places to visit.
Me, no. My mom? Definitely. Both sets of her grandparents immigrated from Eastern Europe. She made a point to go find her grandfather’s village and found the branch that was her mom’s half siblings. She visited them all often. And two summers, she and my dad spent the summer studying the language at their university. They repeated the process a couple of years ago with her other set of grandparents, minus the scandalous half siblings.
That is no for our kids who were born in US. We immigrated from Eastern Europe and with political situation there I am sure they can find a lot more interesting and safe places to visit. Most of the people leave their countries for reason and some of those reasons are still there so it’s a definite no.
I have visited (England and Scotland) but not out of any genealogical importance - just wanted to visit. My wife did have a desire to visit Ireland, so we did that.
For my parents (not my husbands side) that would be Poland where my dads parents immigrated from and Morocco where my dad met my mom and married here and my first two sibs were born.
I have interest for Morocco but not for Poland. Not much family left in Morocco that I know of but some in Israel- another trip I’d love to take but seems overwhelming to make happen!
No desire whatsoever to go to the eastern European countries where my ancestors were not given rights and were subjected to pogroms. They all emigrated by the early 1900’s, for which I am grateful. I would not find my heritage there. When I was in elementary school, we once were supposed to say what our heritage was. My mother said to put down “American.”
For years, I have wanted to visit the country where I believed my parent’s (singular) side of the family originated.
Then along came Ancestry, and about four years ago, I was pretty blown away to discover that my heritage is from a completely different country than what I believed. And I’ve kept the lid on Pandora’s box, because my deceased parent’s secret was theirs and not mine.
As a result of this interesting discovery, while I’d still visit that country, I no longer have any burning desire to see it. And I can’t get too excited about the country where a big chunk of my DNA originated because there’s no family connection.
I have not visited any of the numerous countries of my heritage, nor did my parents. I am a bit of a mutt, and it was great grandparents who immigrated. The countries my relatives immigrated from need a second hand to get enough fingers to count. If I visit any of those countries, it won’t be because of my heritage. It will just be because I want to visit. H’s dad’s parents are immigrants, and FIL made a trip there to visit his parents’ hometown. H isn’t interested in exploring his heritage; if he was to visit the country, it would be for other reasons. We just don’t have a tug of the heart to visit countries that treated our ancestors poorly or didn’t allow them to thrive as an “ooohhh, I’m from there” trip.
Son in law is an immigrant. There is no way he can return to his middle eastern country of birth. I doubt he wants to, although he does remember the country fondly as it was before Desert Storm.
Wow, not too much love for Eastern Europe here. I’m from there and have been back many times with my American husband and US-born kids. They all speak the language and loved it there. The older daughter wants to specialize in the history of the region. But my profession, as well as that of my spouse, is related to thar part of the world, so it’s more relevant for my family I guess (and yes, my ancestors were mistreated and prosecuted there, too, for the same reason, but things change over time).
No for either my husband and I. My husband’s side came from Germany, he has not told me he wants to visit there. If I do visit, it will be for fun and not because of the ancestors.
Both sides of my family are recently (1900s) Canadian. Growing up in the Detroit area, I spent a lot of time visiting family in Ontario, and I applied for and received my Canadian citizenship papers last year. My dad is the first in his family not to have been born in Prague, though. He used to speak fluent Czech in Canada but has no desire to visit the Czech Republic as he was always told that there was a warrant out for his father’s arrest (sketchy war story) and none of the family wanted to test showing up at the border with our family name, so no one has ever gone back. I know Prague is lovely, but I don’t care to travel that far, so I’ve never considered it.
My dad was from Scotland and I visited my grandmother many times and felt part of the village. Now, as just another American tourist, not so much. No family remains in Scotland.
But i have some new interest in Northern Ireland, where my mom’s family is from. Not sure I’ll ever get there.
I will say I adored visiting Ukraine, where my offspring and many friends have roots, if subjected to pogroms, and am so glad to have seen it when I did.
In 2013, I joined my wife in a trip to Vilnius. She grew up there, and my mother’s family were from Lithuania (or at least since the 16th century). While my mother’s family is from a collection of shtetls across the country, with her grandfather coming from one which is now in Belarus, her great uncle established and ran the central tavern/restaurant in the Ghetto/Jewish quarter.
It was damaged in the war, and was torn down after the war - there is a parking lot there now.
My father’s family came from a shtetl in Ukraine, but i see no reason to visit it. There is almost no evidence of where his parents grew up. It was partly burnt to the ground in WWI, and the rest was destroyed, including the Jewish cemetery, which, like most Jewish cemeteries in occupied East Europe, had its headstones torn up by the Nazis for use in paving roads and as buildings. The USSR, of course, refused to even dig them up*.
In truth, that is what it all felt like to me - a cemetery which has all of its markers torn up. Considering how Jews in most of East Europe were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, extensive parts of Eastern Europe are indeed unmarked graveyards.
*In Ukraine until the invasion it had become a social service activity for young people to find these headstones, dig them up and return them to the nearest Jewish cemetery, and to build a memorial from the remaining fragments. The relationship between Jews and Ukrainians is the best that it has been in hundreds of years, so that’s a ray of light.
Some I have been to. Some I will visit. Others I don’t plan to go to. Mostly I have visited for the tourist potential rather than the family connection.