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Oh Me, Oh My, Where Will I Fly?
Have you ever been curious as as to how your ancestors lived? The towns or villages they grew up in? The markets, landscape and churches they attended? What was there to see or do in that area? Have you ever wanted to walk in their footsteps but had no one to walk with? Now you… Read more
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So you have decided to travel to the land of your ancestors. Sounds romantic right? But when it comes right down to it where do you start? Well for me the answer always comes to who do you want to find? What relative do you find the most intriguing at the moment? I mean if we climb the ancestry tree on @ancestry or @familysearch or any other of the genealogy domains out there, we will have thousands of relatives to choose from. However that’s where it can get tricky and overwhelming pretty quick. One of the biggest mistakes people make when travelling to their ancestral lands is they try to do and see to much. Understand that your ancestors lived busy lives. They had families, jobs and hobbies. Maybe they moved around a lot or changed employment. Think of your life. If someone were to trace you, follow your footsteps, they would most likely be exhausted trying to keep up. My key advice would be to pick someone and stick to that someone. It is possible to learn about other direct family members to that person because generally a family lived close to one another especially in their early years. You can in fact learn a lot about a family unit by sticking with one person. However, stay focused on that person, use census records to discover where they lived, places they worked, other family members and neighbors. This way you will be able to have starting point as to who and where you want to build your trip around. Once you have determined which relative is the lucky recipient of your interest and intended visit start digging. you can learn a lot about a person from the records left behind. So think on it and pick an ancestor you never know what you might find!
Family History Travel 