Taking a deep dive into my family’s heritage was far from the top of the itinerary when my sister and I began planning a five-week college backpacking trip through Europe in the early 1980s.

Truthfully, our travel goals were pretty simple: getting in some serious beach time and soaking up plenty of big-city ambience. But travel sometimes gives you more than you bargain for.

Of course, we did end up having a wonderful time pursuing our other priorities. But looking back, what really stands out for me was the time we spent getting to know the family my paternal grandfather had left behind in Norway eight decades earlier.

Growing up, it was well-known family lore that my grandfather Peter had left Porsgrunn, Norway, as a young man around the turn of the 20th century. He arrived at Ellis Island in New York City and then made his way to Minnesota, and ultimately to North Dakota, where he married an American girl, homesteaded a farm on the prairie, and raised a family.

But it wasn’t until I stood by the bedside of one of his sisters, my great aunt, as she cried and tightly grasped my hand that I really understood what his journey meant. All of a sudden, as a 20-year-old on my inaugural international trip, I had my first travel epiphany.

Not only could I clearly see the courage it had taken for my grandfather to board that ship to an unknown land, never to return again to his home country, but I also saw for the first time the heartache his decision must have meant for the family he left behind.

Through an interpreter, my great aunt Karin — by then an elderly woman in a care facility near Oslo — recalled how she and her sister Sigrid had cried as their big brother had boarded the ship that would take him to America.

Having never met my grandfather, who died years before I was born, the moment was incredibly poignant for me, and it is one that has stayed with me through the years.

Long-Lost Family

Although my grandfather’s story was well known in my family, contact between the family branches had been almost non-existent. I knew that one of my aunts had been pen pals with a cousin in Norway through the years, but for my sisters and me, our Norwegian relatives were a bit of a mystery.

Then, while we were in college in the early 1980s, my sister Angie and I decided to take a month-long summer backpacking trip through Europe. In a nod to our Norwegian heritage, we planned to start the trip in Oslo.

Before we left, my dad sent a letter to his first cousin, Astrid, introducing us and explaining our family connection. This was long before quick internet responses, and we left for Norway not knowing if the letter had arrived, let alone whether the family would be interested in meeting us.

But as soon as we landed at the Oslo Airport, we heard our strangely pronounced names over the loudspeaker. In a beautiful travel moment, Astrid was there to meet us. Not only that, but she took us to her home, introduced us to her husband, adult children, and granddaughter, and then proceeded to drive us around Oslo for four days, showing us the sights.

Touring Oslo

As my first international city, Oslo will hold a special place in my heart. Add in the strong family connection, and my visit was truly transformative, laying the groundwork for a lifelong love of travel.

We visited the city’s beloved Vigeland Sculpture Park with its iconic Monolith teeming with humanity. We also took in other attractions like the Viking Ship Museum, the site of the ski-jumping event for Oslo’s 1952 Winter Olympics, and the Royal Palace. To top it off, Astrid’s family took us on an evening boat cruise around Oslofjord, complete with a picnic of grilled sausages and flatbread.

Even more impactful were the visits with our Norwegian family members, starting with Karin, but also including my great aunt Sigrid, who was well into her 80s but still living alone in Porsgrunn in an apartment above the family boutique. I remember her as a warmhearted woman who served us a lovely lunch of smorgasbord.

Then there were the fun cultural moments for me — my first tastes of aquavit and Campari (they’re acquired tastes!), and a family dinner featuring a large bucket of freshly caught, steamed shrimp, eaten simply with bread and mayonnaise.

Travel Surprises

As is the case with any international travel, there were some surprises along the way. For one thing, I remember being amazed by how fluent most Norwegians were in English, and also somewhat intimidated by how well-versed my family members were in art, science, and literature.

I was also surprised by the level of interest everyone seemed to have in their American family members. One evening, Astrid showed us letters from my grandfather the family had saved. As she read us passages, I was struck by how upbeat all of his letters were about life in North Dakota, mentioning none of the hardships that the family had endured on the prairie in the Great Depression.

We also encountered some gentle criticism for the United States. This was around the time that the U.S. had boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and I remember getting questions about why my country had allowed politics to enter into this international sporting event. It was my first instance with that slightly uncomfortable experience of trying to explain a political stance that I had nothing to do with and was ambivalent about myself.

But perhaps most of all, the trip made me contemplate my grandfather’s decision to leave Norway. Why did he do it? Did it fulfill the dreams he had as a teenager boarding that ship? And did he know he would probably never see his family again? Also, there was the big question of how things would have turned out for him if he had stayed.

In many ways, the trip made me see my country and the world in a new light. It seems so obvious now, but that trip made me realize in a big way that my way of life wasn’t the only way. Certainly, that realization opened up a thirst in me to see and experience as many other paths as I could.

Ancestry Travel

Although everyone is different, and my trip was unique to its time and my family history, I believe looking back at your roots is an invaluable experience. For those who still have unexplored family ties in other countries around the world, I highly recommend taking a closer look.

Sadly, I failed to maintain ties with my Norwegian relatives after returning to my life and career in the United States. It is one of my biggest travel regrets, and I still hope to return to Oslo one day to retrace those steps that set me off on a lifetime of adventure.

For tips on how to navigate ancestry travel, check out these TravelAwaits articles:

• Walk In Your Ancestors’ Footsteps: 13 Tips For Planning Genealogy Travel
• 9 Lessons Learned During My Ancestry Travel
• 8 Tips For Planning Your Ancestry Travel
• Use Your DNA To Plan A Custom Ancestry Trip

My parents were Holocaust survivors. Most of my mother’s family lived through the horror of World War II in Europe. Most of my father’s didn’t. The devastating loss of his family, the destruction of the world he had known, and the years spent hiding in the woods of Poland severely traumatized my father until the day he died.

My father came from a small town outside Warsaw, Poland. By April 1945, my father, one brother, and a nephew were all that was left of what had once been a large family. He rarely spoke of his life before, during, and immediately following the war. Despite my interest in my father’s life in Poland, encouraging him to speak about anything prior to his immigration to Germany and then to Israel was out of the question. Nightmares frequently plagued him, and I refused to satisfy my curiosity at the expense of my father’s fragile peace of mind.

He died in 1990, and I never even knew the name of the village where he grew up. But all that changed one morning in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Thanks to the staff at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, I had many of my questions answered and walked away with a few surprises, as well.

Disclaimer: Our sincere thanks go out to Visit Fort Wayne for their generosity in hosting us, and to the Genealogy Center for filling in many blanks in my family history. All opinions are entirely my own.

An Unexpected Opportunity

The itinerary for a hosted press trip to Fort Wayne offered my husband and me the opportunity to tour the Genealogy Center. As part of our tour, I was invited to send Center Manager, Curt Witcher, what little information I had about my parents’ families. This gave us a firsthand look at how the center functioned. I pulled together all the information I had and crossed my fingers. On the one hand, I looked forward to the prospect of unlocking some of the mysteries of my father’s past and the extended family the Nazis stole from my children and me. On the other, there was an underlying feeling of trepidation. Was I about to open a Pandora’s Box? “Well, in for a Penny, in for a pound,” I said to myself, and packed my bag.

On our first morning in Fort Wayne, we headed for the second floor of the Allen County Public Library, home to the largest public genealogy center in the United States. The facility houses an ever-growing collection of 1.2 million physical items, 4 million searchable records online, 70,000 family histories, and provides full access to Ancestry and other genealogy-related databases. All this is free for the public to use.

The Genealogy Center contains 42,000 square feet of family histories, public records, newspapers, microfilm, books, periodicals, and other resources, all related to genealogy around the globe. It also houses state-of-the-art computers and scanners. But the center’s most valuable resource is its staff of dedicated genealogists who assist visitors in connecting with their past.

When we visited the Genealogy Center, the library, as well as other similar institutions, were still closed due to Covid-19 concerns. We were fortunate to have had the privilege of touring the facility with Curt. We were even more fortunate to have learned what Genealogy Center researchers Sara Allen and John Beatty, who had researched my family, had discovered.

Shedding Light On My Roots

By the time we sat down to learn what Sara and John had unearthed about my family, we had already gained a deep respect for the Genealogy Center. The materials available to individuals wishing to learn more about their heritage were truly impressive. Sara handed me an inch-thick binder filled with printed documents, handwritten notations, and a compilation of resources for further research. She and John then walked us through the materials, answering my questions as we went along. What they were able to find, and how they found it, was stunning.

One of the first pieces of my father’s family history Sara revealed to me was my grandmother’s maiden name. Through a library in Germany specializing in Holocaust records, she had traced my one surviving uncle’s movements from his escape from the Warsaw Ghetto through his flight to Bavaria, where thick forests offered places to hide. From Germany, my uncle emigrated to Boston after the war. I had only known about the last leg of my uncle’s journey. I learned that he had been sponsored by his aunt, Leah, who had been living in the Boston area since 1881. Her sister, Perla, was my father’s and uncle’s mother, so in finding Leah’s maiden name, Sara also found Perla’s. The same line of research also yielded the name of my father’s home village of Kolbiel.

John and Sara traced my father’s family back as far as 1806 to his great grandfather, Szulem, a furrier by trade. Perhaps it was through Szulem that my father inherited the skills to become a fur cutter in Montreal, where he and my mother permanently settled in 1953.

We spent less time delving into my mother’s family, as most of them survived the Holocaust. I knew my maternal grandparents, uncles, cousins, and a whole slew of distant relatives.

The Takeaway

Although some who dig into their family histories end up wishing they hadn’t, this was not my experience. There was no Pandora’s Box, no ax murderer, no family scandal. Piecing together the story of my father’s family allowed me to replace the black wall in my mind with the names and imaginary faces of those whose genes I carry. I am truly indebted to Sara, John, and Curt for opening a window to my family history I believed to be forever closed.

Since our trip to Fort Wayne and the Genealogy Center, I’ve done a bit more research. If we travel to Poland, Kolbiel will top my list. Perhaps I’ll sense the presence of my lost family, who, like millions of others, deserved to live, but instead died at the hands of true monsters. I regret not having prepared myself emotionally for my journey into the past. The mixture of grief and anger that welled up in me sometimes overwhelms me still. Maybe the experience was a Pandora’s Box of sorts after all.

Tips For Visiting The Genealogy Center In Fort Wayne

Before traveling to Fort Wayne and embarking on a physical search at the Genealogy Center, you might want to access the Center’s online catalog first to give you a head start.

The center only charges for paper copies. If you bring in an external drive or memory card, you can scan the information you uncover and take it with you at no charge.

Related Reading:

• Stuckey’s: Returning The Family Favorite Road Trip Stop To Its Roots
• How I Discovered More Than My Roots On Ellis Island
• 9 Must-Visit World War II Sites In Berlin

While thinking of her sweetheart who had just left home for World War II, a young woman wrote a love song in 1942. With assistance from a famous Hollywood composer, who helped write the accompanying music, the song “I’m Dreaming of No One But You” was finished but never recorded — until now.

Thanks to a dedicated grandson, you can listen to the song today, on what would have been songwriter Leona Augustine’s 106th birthday.

Life On A Farm

Leona Augustine grew up on a farm in Missouri. Her father, Louis, played in the local cornet band. At home, he enjoyed playing music with his children; Leona played piano and her brother Andy played the violin, shares Jacob Luecke, Leona’s grandson, in an interview with TravelAwaits.

When Leona and Andy got older, they began to collaborate and compose their own songs. Later, Leona began writing songs by herself and mailed them to publishers across the country, hoping the songs would be published and distributed.

Thinking of Felix Luecke, her sweetheart and future husband, she wrote the lyrics and melody of “I’m Dreaming of No One But You.” Eventually, she connected with noted composer Bob Carleton, who likely wrote the song’s chord structure. Although the song was copyrighted and its sheet music was printed and published, it appears it was never recorded by anyone, Luecke explains.

A Song’s Second Chance

“We know all of these details about Leona and the song’s history because a few years ago, my dad gave me a big envelope filled with documents and photos about our family — including the rejection letters Grandma received and saved from music publishing companies and the sheet music for ‘I’m Dreaming of No One But You,’” Luecke says. “Grandma died when I was young, so I didn’t know her, but I play acoustic guitar and also enjoy writing music, so I was really excited to learn she and I share a musical aptitude and interest.”

Intrigued by the song and its history, Luecke first tried to transcribe it for guitar, but that didn’t work very well, he explains. He then realized the song needed to be played in the swinging, big band style that was popular when the song was written.

Using fiverr, a freelance services marketplace, Luecke first worked with Venezuelan composer Samuel Fuentes on the big band arrangement. He then ended up working with professional musicians from nine different countries to get separate tracks for 22 musical instruments, as well as vocal tracks from a man and a woman to create a duet.

“Each time I received a recording from a musician, I would spend hours checking the track against the score to make sure each note was correct,” Luecke says. “There usually would be a couple of missed notes that required a revision, which wasn’t a big deal. I also spent countless hours using my music software, Logic Pro X, to fix subtle timing and tuning issues in almost every track.”

The Song Gets Released Today

“I’m Dreaming of No One But You” is being released today, January 15, 2021, on what would have been Leona Augustine’s 106th birthday. You can listen to it on all major streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, as well as on Facebook. You can watch the music video here:

“On a personal level, this has been a unique opportunity to learn about my family’s history and also ‘meet’ my grandmother and share our common interest: writing, composing, and playing music. I’m excited to be able to share Grandma Leona’s talent with the world,” Luecke says. “I think this is a great time to record and release this song because it will resonate with people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people have been separated from their loved ones, just like they were when Grandma Leona wrote the song during World War II. I hope everyone enjoys listening to ‘I’m Dreaming of No One But You.’”

For even more on Leona and the story behind her heart-warming song, visit LeonasDream.com.

Researching family history is one of the most popular hobbies around, especially online.

I love mixing genealogy with travel. You can plan a rewarding heritage trip even if all you know is what country your ancestors came from.

When planning a family history trip, I compile lots of family tree information and many choices of locations. Then I decide which locations have the most potential. To narrow it down, I look at the particular things there are to do in each place. Some of these things have nothing to do with family history. If there are two equally relevant ancestral locations, I’ll choose the one that has the most things for everyone to do.

Here are a few tips for planning a genealogy vacation.

1. You Aren’t Planning A Genealogy Research Trip

Family history and heritage tours aren’t the same as genealogy research trips.

A research trip will usually take you to places like the family history library or the county courthouse. Unless genealogy is the passion of every person in your group, I strongly recommend you do the research first, and then take the trip. Use the trip to fully experience special places in person.

If you don’t enjoy doing research, you can pay someone to do it for you.

2. Get The Family History Right

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of inaccurate information out there. Before you use your family tree to plan a trip, either verify the key facts yourself or hire someone knowledgeable to check them for you.

You don’t want to spend time and money on a trip and then find out your ancestral homeland is actually somewhere else.

3. If In Doubt About A Person, Include Them In Your Family Tree

One question that often comes up when preparing a family tree is whether or not to include certain groups of people.

I include everyone whose life story interests me, or whose details might shed light on the lives of the key people in my family. I don’t just include direct ancestors. I look at the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins who turn up in each generation. Their life stories make the picture more complete.

4. Adoptions And Blended Families Count

I’ve found that adoptees themselves often assume they should be excluded from the family tree. This horrifies me. I can only say, “Of course you belong. You’re part of the family!”

Unless your research is archaically legal (e.g. tracing a will that leaves a fortune to “the heirs of my body”) or driven by medical genetics, I would include everyone who has been part of the family. Family history is about understanding our shared stories from the past.

5. Look For Friends, Associates, And Neighbors

Your family history trip is a chance to experience a day in the lives of your ancestors. Then, as now, friends, associates, and neighbors all played a role. These could include the witnesses to weddings, the people whose children were baptized on the same day, and the local tradesmen and shopkeepers.

One way this shows up on the ground is in war memorials. The many names engraved there belong to your family member’s friends, associates, and neighbors. If that’s not an emotional ancestral site, I don’t know what is.

When you read about a historic event in your family’s town or city, such as a sporting win, an iconic theatrical performance, or a fire, remember that your ancestors were witnesses. They told their children about it. They were at the finish line and in that audience. They watched in horror as the flames rose higher. Those events happened at known places that you can still find.

6. You Can Still Plan Travel When All You Have Is A Country

Look at your family tree and start making a list of the associated places that might interest you. When I first started doing research, my list had two places on it: Canada and England. Was that enough?

Yes, I would say that can be enough. For some people, planning at the national level is as specific as they will ever get.

Even if all you know is the country, you can meaningfully explore your history and culture. Visit the sections in museums that cover the time periods your ancestors lived there. Discover prominent landmarks and heritage sites of national significance.

One example is the Tower of London. Construction started not long after 1066. Any of your ancestors who grew up in London after it was built would have known of it. The same can be said of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and the River Thames itself.

Go ahead and claim major tourist attractions, landmarks, and sites of national importance as part of your own family history. These places were the backdrop of your ancestors’ lives.

7. Enjoy Lots Of Food, Drink, Pageantry, And Culture

Did you know that UNESCO recognizes intangible cultural heritage? This includes everything from Thai massage and Irish harping to the picking of a certain grass in Bosnia and beer culture in Belgium.

Experiencing your homeland through food, drink, and music is a fun kind of cultural immersion. The people living there today are living the life you would have had if your ancestors hadn’t left.

8. Retrace Your Ancestors’ Emigration Journey

One way to walk in your ancestors’ footsteps is to retrace their emigration journey.

Consider an island nation like Ireland. Until recently, the only way to leave was on a ship. You may be able to discover which port your ancestors sailed from and then visit it.

In the 19th century, the town of Cobh became a main port of Irish emigration. A quick online search reveals there’s about a 50 percent chance that an Irish emigrant bound for the United States between 1850 and 1950 left from here. The Cobh Heritage Centre dramatically tells the story of Irish emigration. Even if you aren’t 100 percent sure Cobh is the right port, you can still go there and learn about emigration while having a reasonable chance of being in the right place.

Try searching for emigration information for the time and place you’re interested in. Maybe there will be ideas for your own itinerary.

9. Look For Points Of Entry And Transition

Upon arrival in a new country, immigrants are often funneled through official channels. For a family history trip in the new country, try visiting places of arrival and transition, like Ellis Island and Grand Central Station.

10. Look Into Migration Museums

Search for “migration museum,” and you may be surprised how many there are. EPIC in Dublin tells the Irish emigration story. Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is an example of an immigration museum.

11. Make A List Of Potential Places To Visit

With luck, your genealogy research will produce a list of specific regions, towns, and even street addresses you might like to see. To narrow it down, think about what you want to get out of the family history portion of your trip.

To literally stand in your ancestors’ footsteps, make a list of the places that qualify. Some things to put on that list, if you know them, could be:

• the date range
• house addresses
• villages or suburbs of interest
• churches (the sites of baptisms, marriages, and funerals)
• cemeteries where your ancestors might be buried (Find A Grave is useful for this.)
• schools
• major workplaces like factories and mines
• hospitals and asylums
• anything else you think might be interesting

I use a selection of old maps to help me find these locations.

12. Decide If You Actually Want To Go To Those Places

I try to find places with an emotional connection that look safe, interesting, and open to visitors. When you’re traveling with your family or friends, the place needs to be appealing to everyone. If you have been open to building big lists of people and locations, you’ll have options. Maybe there’s a way to visit a special church in the morning and take in a soccer game in the afternoon.

I use Google Street View extensively to check out possible sites. I read tourist guidebooks, websites, and blogs to narrow down the choices. Sometimes I follow Facebook groups from a town to see if it should be on my travel itinerary.

13. Recreate A Day In The Life

Our ancestors had busy, full lives. They didn’t just sit in their houses, pop out to get married, and then stay in until they were carried out to the cemetery for burial. Imagine each one of them walking down the main street of the village on market day, taking their children to school, or making butter in the old dairy.

On special holidays, they may have gone to a community celebration at the local manor house or castle. If they lived near a river, they had to cross it. Walk across the bridge, or ride a boat down the river, and you are literally retracing part of their life journey.

These tips are meant to get you thinking about how to combine genealogy and travel. I hope you’ll find a way to try it.

If a member of your family served in World War II, consider following in their footsteps the next time your travels take you to Europe or to the Pacific. I traced my dad’s military path in Germany and France. It was extremely moving — more so than I could have imagined — to stand where he stood during a world crisis.

Tracing your family’s military history is an experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life. There are few better ways to feel a connection to the places you visit on your travels.

Following In My Dad’s Footsteps

My dad died in 2003, and for more than a decade, my mom lived alone in their house. When she moved to a retirement home a few years ago, I cleaned out all of the drawers and cupboards she hadn’t touched since my dad’s death. To my surprise, I uncovered a small box of his army memorabilia, including his dog tags and a notebook in which he had meticulously recorded where he’d served during World War II. All of a sudden, I had his army unit information and the names of the places he’d lived. When he was alive, he seldom spoke of his wartime experiences, so I had only a vague idea of where he had been in France and Germany. His notebook became the basis of my travel plans to trace his military path.

My dad’s army unit took him close to the eastern border of Germany. I decided to go there first and then to backtrack west. He traveled to Paris twice on leave, even taking his own photos of the Eiffel Tower and Versailles. While I did go there, as well as Sankt Goar, Germany, and Le Havre, France, I didn’t see any need to go in chronological order. As long as I visited the main cities he went, I could go in any order, which turned out fine.

Two places in particular stood out. The first was the former concentration camp in Flossenburg, Germany. Visiting this memorial and museum was sobering. My dad arrived shortly after its liberation, when the sick prisoners were still there, since they were not able to travel. In the museum, I found a photo taken at the exact time my dad was stationed at Flossenburg. That’s how I learned that German SS prisoners arrived there. He surely would have seen them. This is the kind of insight you can only gain by being at a place in person.

Another meaningful place I visited was the small town of Schwabach, Germany. I knew from my dad’s notebook that it was there he learned the war in Europe was over. As I walked around the town and visited its small museums, I found photos of Schwabach at the time my dad arrived. Due to the bombing and fighting, the buildings lay in ruins. I was able to see what my dad saw just two weeks after the Germans retreated east.

Tips For Tracing Your Relative’s Military Journey

Here are a few tips for tracing the military journey of your relative.

Start With The Official Source

For information on those who served in the United States military during World War II, check the National Archives National Personnel Records Center’s website and fill out the form. Many records burned in the 1970s, with records on last names from M through Z especially affected. You will be told that there’s no guarantee your relative’s records survived. Go ahead and try anyway. A remarkable number of these records are still sitting there in some form. I got a pile of copied records that were slightly blackened around the edges but totally readable. They cost about $70.

Search The Internet For Your Relative’s Unit

Next, look for information on the units in which your family member served. My dad served in the 90th Infantry Division. A group of these “Tough ’Ombres” is still around, and I joined their Facebook group to learn more about their experience. I had the opportunity to correspond with some of these amazing guys and get a sense of what my dad’s life was like during the war.

Reach Out To Military Historians Before You Travel

If you can get in touch with a historian who specializes in your relative’s military branch or division, you’ll probably uncover a treasure trove of information.

I contacted Jennifer Holik at the World War II Research & Writing Center. She put me in touch with a soldier who was in the liberation unit at Flossenburg. He sent me a huge notebook of information he’d collected so that I could copy whatever I needed. It’s a one-of-a-kind resource I was so thankful to have. He and other army guys encouraged me and helped me plan my trip.

Don’t Be Shy About Contacting Museums Or Memorials

If you are planning on visiting a public memorial like the one in Flossenburg, write ahead and let them know you are coming. I was planning on only a short time there — maybe an hour-long tour. When the on-site historian wrote back offering a personal tour, the visit turned into a full-day experience and a priceless time of learning about the camp during the summer my dad lived there.

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask Locals For Help

You will be amazed at how helpful local people can be.

In Le Havre, more than 90 percent of the city was destroyed during World War II and then rebuilt. We easily found the Halle de Ville, which my dad photographed in 1945. I also wanted to find the war memorial and fountain where my dad stood and took a photo. The streets are quite different now than they were then, and we couldn’t find the monument.

Before giving up, I ran into a small museum and showed my photo to the young man at the front desk. I don’t speak French, and the man didn’t speak much English. But he recognized the place. “Not the same now,” he ventured. He gave us directions, and soon I was standing in the exact spot my dad visited 75 years earlier, in the shadow of the war memorial.

Reach out for help, be polite, and persevere. Go on your journey knowing that you will experience a deeper connection with your family. You might even make new friends in distant places. Return and make a photo book for your family so that the generations to come will know their heritage. This trip will change the way you look at life.

People obsessed with ancestry reel off names and dates until their friends’ eyes glaze over. But the best stories — the heart and soul of history — are found not on a computer but through travel.

My research took me to Stourbridge, England, and the ancestry lessons I learned are applicable to all, whether your family comes from Galway, China, or Timbuktu.

1. Contact Local History Societies

When I first arrived in Stourbridge, I couldn’t imagine my mother’s era: the 1920s to ’50s, when she peddled an old bicycle down country lanes humming “In the Mood” or “Little Brown Jug.” But slowly the past emerged despite the busy ring roads and dense housing estates.

I knew she absconded from the area in the 1950s. She was 35 and pregnant with me when she eloped, leaving her history and a previous marriage behind.

The local history society wound up doing most of my research. They receive lots of queries from overseas and seem delighted to help. In Stourbridge, history is a local pastime.

During one visit, my helper passed on local knowledge. “A hay cutter!” she tutted, noting my great grandfather’s occupation on the census. “That’s seasonal work. He was basically unemployed!”

2. Tap On Doors

Armed with addresses, I knocked on doors. Sometimes I knocked on the wrong door and was still asked in. It’s not every day an Aussie comes calling, and the popularity of shows like the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? means people love helping.

Eventually, I was shown into a house where my mother once lived, and the owners even gave me a few minutes alone to dwell on the past and let my emotions settle.

3. Visit Sites (Even When They Have Changed)

Some of the sites I visited were unsettling. My mother’s mother was unmarried and had four children out of wedlock. The first two she raised, but when she was seduced or worse while working as a maid, she became pregnant with twins. It was the Depression, she came from a poor family, and she ended up in the workhouse slogging away in the laundry.

By the time I got to Stourbridge his old workhouse had been redeveloped into a housing estate. But the Brits value the past, and developers kept the laundry furnace chimney and the original clock tower that chimed the girls’ long working days.

My mother was sent to an orphanage. She’d scrawled an account of her first memory in an exercise book which I found after her death:

The sobbing was uncontrollable, and I vividly remember being assuaged by a tempting crust of bread, and butter smothered in golden syrup. The bread looked as thick as the doorstep on which I sat — that was my earliest memory. It was taken for granted by me that we were placed in the homes because our mother being unmarried could not afford to keep us…

Locals told me the orphanage had been demolished, and like any place with acreage, turned into a housing estate.

But I found the houses built around an old playing field. My mother wrote of how she would stand at a window and longingly watch her twin brother Frank kicking a ball. The sexes were strictly segregated, so she was unable to talk to him for 12 years.

Instinct drew me to a path behind some bushes. There was the old receiving house and the doorstop where she sobbed. I sat on that blockbuster of a doorstep and cried. She had been ripped from her mother, just as I now had lost her.

The door to the derelict building mysteriously swung open revealing long, soulless halls, scuffed linoleum, and barred windows. Even though trespassing, I walked in to find a frame with photos of some of the orphans and their cottage parents.

Pinned in the center was a note: If anyone would like information on what it was like at the cottage homes, please contact Terence, who was an orphan here in the 1930s.

When phoned, Terence he said he’d placed that note there 18 years previously when he first retired. He was astounded that someone had finally contacted him — especially someone from overseas.

4. Search For Contemporaries

I drove Terence to the site. He asked me to take his photo in front of the downpipe, which had been his cricket stump. “No toys,” he said. “Instead, we had hours of fun with a piece of string forming shapes between our fingers.”

He pointed to the empty bookshelves. “There were books, but we were not allowed to read them — they were for show. And school wouldn’t give us homework because ‘homers’ weren’t expected to get on in the world.”

His depictions of orphanage life explained much about my mother, who despite being a great beauty had extremely low self-esteem.

5. Hang Out With Locals

I walked down a street ironically called Hope Street looking for the house my grandmother worked in as a maid.

There was no house significant enough to have warranted servants. I asked a local walking his dog if he knew one. “If you want to know anything around here, Love, you have to ask in the pubs.”

So began my fortnight of drinking endless pots of cloudy cider and spilling my mother’s story to barmaids. My mother had worked as a barmaid, and these women felt an affinity with her story. They introduced me to old-timers on the off chance they might know something.

The Glasscutters Arms had a bowling club behind it, and one of the old men there excitedly told me he had known my mother’s first husband, Bill Hopton, a glassblower.

“He died on the green,” he said. “Had a heart attack. But he lived with his sister, and she had a son, and he was like a grandson to him. He drinks at the Cat.”

Tracking him down, he opened the door to me in his moccasins and skinny jeans. It was the only doorknock where I wasn’t invited in. The past was the past, and he didn’t want to know about it.

6. Try All Doors

There was a warmer welcome at the manor house where my mother’s older sister and aunt had lived in as servants. The eccentric owner had built a cinema in his attic.

The manor house was still in the family, and I had written a letter to the present owner. I was almost heading home when I received the email. Would you like to come to supper?

We dined at a table on expansive lawns. Dessert was a meringue loaded with blackberries picked from the garden.

As I sipped champagne, I thought of my ancestors who were once his family’s servants, and of how gobsmacked they would have been to see me hobnobbing with the aristocracy.

After dinner came the grand tour. There was a coat of arms over the door, family portraits in each room, and an impressive main staircase so rickety we were forced to use the servant’s staircase — quite fitting given my family’s background.

Three flights took us to the attic where there was a now run-down art deco cinema and a ticket booth where my 16-year-old mother sold tickets after leaving the orphanage.

7. Heed The Lessons Well

On my trip to the Black Country, I did not find any relatives. Yet, I did find out much more about my mother. Her orphanage background set her on a course for life. When she became pregnant with me, there was no way she was going to suffer the indignities of having a “bastard” child.

She changed her name by deed poll and ran away with my father. They boarded a cargo ship for a new life in Australia, marrying some seven years later.

8. Go Before It’s Too Late

My trip made me realize the importance of visiting the lands of our forebears before more evidence is lost.

That was three years ago. Since then the manor, after being in the same family for generations, has been sold and turned into apartments, and perhaps a house has already supplanted the old receiving house.

9. You Can Address Past Hurts

My mother loved words, but with a meager education, she could only find kitchen jobs after my father left her. So, like her mother, she struggled to raise children on her own.

In her 80s, before dementia set in, she wrote down her memories, perhaps knowing one day I would follow the clues.

One of the local history ladies I befriended in Stourbridge suggested I send my mother’s reminiscences to a history journal, The Blackcountryman.

To my delight, the editor thought my mother’s story well-written enough to publish.

It seems strange that my mother’s homecoming should be in print, and that the daughter she left her birthplace for, in order to shield her from gossip and innuendo, paved the way for her return.

So, yes, “the past is a foreign country,” but it’s a place you can certainly travel to.

Ancestry travel is one of the hottest travel trends right now. Thanks to DNA analysis and genealogical research tools by companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe, we have a better, more precise idea than ever before of exactly where we come from, and traveling to those places can be an indelible, moving experience.

Whether your ancestry search takes you across the state or around the world, here are a few tips to keep in mind as you plan your quest.

1. Consider Budget And Location

As with every trip, you’ll want to bear in mind the bottom line. While the idea of a global trip to explore one’s roots might seem like a great one in theory, in reality, many of us need to stick to travel budgets. Consider choosing one of the top countries on your DNA profile — and one that is closer and less expensive — for a first-time trip, as opposed to a difficult-to-access destination.

Another word to the wise: Many online ancestry sites will show the migration of your relatives from their home countries to the United States. You might end up having an equally rewarding experience traveling to the domestic city where your ancestors first settled. It will be easier on your wallet, and you won’t have to deal with a possible language barrier.

2. Be Prepared

Once you’ve determined where you want to go, keep in mind that the key to a successful ancestry trip is preparation. Make sure you’ve got important documents — including wedding announcements, birth certificates, and even obituaries — organized, preferably in electronic form so that packing isn’t difficult. The same goes for photos and your family tree. You’ll want to have all of the essentials at your fingertips to help connect the dots once you’ve reached your destination. Going to visit a place where your ancestors once lived is an incredible experience; having the knowledge and context to back it up makes it all the more meaningful.

3. Reach Out To Family Members Online

Another perk of most major online ancestry sites is the ability to reach out to relatives you might not even have known existed! People whose DNA partially matches yours are listed, along with information on how closely you’re related and your common ancestors. These people (most likely cousins) could help fill in gaps in your family tree or offer other insights. If they live in the areas you plan to visit during your trip, schedule a coffee or lunch. It’s a terrific way to make new friends and present-day connections to your ancestors.

4. Map Out Your Time

Perhaps there’s a certain person or place you’re chasing down, such as the church where your great-grandparents were married or the house where they once lived. Maybe you don’t want to be as specific, and just want to get a feel for your ancestors’ homeland.

Whatever form your trip takes, it’s important to map out your time accordingly. Chances are you’ll want to check out several towns or spots in your quest to learn more about where your family came from. To be sure you’ll have enough time to see everything you want to, take into account travel time, including drive time, time on the rails, and total time spent at each place. Your schedule doesn’t need to be so rigid that it excludes all flexibility, but it’s wise to have an idea of how you’ll allocate your time.

5. Call Ahead

Another tip, especially if you plan on doing a records search or document dive during your trip, is to call ahead! Libraries, archives, city halls, churches, and even cemeteries can all be invaluable treasure troves of information to help you learn more about your family. That said, there’s nothing worse than finding out these resources are closed while you’re on your trip. Knowing their operating hours before you go will save you both time and disappointment. Another perk of contacting these places ahead of time? Many staffers or volunteers will be happy to guide you in your research if you make arrangements before you arrive and fill them in on the documents or information you’re seeking.

6. Consider Hiring A Pro

If you want to trace your family’s roots but don’t have time for extensive research and preparation, hiring a pro might make sense. A quick online search including your destination city or country will bring up many professionals who could take on your case and start digging; that said, consider starting with the Association of Professional Genealogists. The organization’s members abide by a clear Code of Ethics and Professional Practices, and the site provides the contact information of certified specialists focusing on adoption, DNA, African-American, and Native-American searches. You can easily browse the site to find a great fit, whether in the U.S. or abroad. No matter what you decide, keep in mind that you are paying a professional for their time, not a guarantee of specific results.

7. Manage Your Expectations

We’ve all seen the genealogy television shows where family mysteries are neatly solved for celebrities and stars. The pieces come together perfectly, complete with a pretty bow on top, all in a single broadcast.

It’s important to keep in mind, however, that this isn’t the typical genealogy experience. Even the most seasoned researchers can and do run into dead-ends when tracing ancestry. Sometimes, sadly, lost records and broken paper trails can stymie your efforts to track down information about your family.

That said, resolve to enjoy the experience of traveling to where they came from, even if you can’t nail down specifics about their individual journeys. You might not be able to track down an address or place of birth for an ancestor, but you can walk the same streets they did, experience the same culture, eat the same types of food, and get a sense of what their lives were like. This can be a powerful and life-changing experience, even if you don’t have all the answers by the end of your trip. While you might come away with fewer facts than you’d imagined, you’ll be all the richer for having made the journey.

8. Document Your Trip

You probably won’t be taking your entire extended family along with you on your genealogy quest. That said, they’ll still be interested in what you uncover, and in your experiences on the road. Make sure to document your trip in several different ways.

Be ready to record what you learn, whether by photocopy, smartphone snap, or direct input to your online family tree.

If you’re meeting with distant relatives, make sure to record any family stories, thoughts, or insights they have to share on your smartphone; you can easily convert these recordings into files that can be sent to folks back home via email. You can also transcribe them once you get home and add them to your family tree.

Take lots of photos — more than you think you’ll need — for your family back home. This is a chance for them to take part in what you’re experiencing firsthand. They’ll appreciate your efforts to include them.

As I mentioned before, it can be an overwhelming, full-circle feeling to know you’re returning to the place where those who came before you lived and raised their families. With this in mind, consider keeping a travel journal while on your adventure so that you can jot down and process those feelings.

The beauty of the world is that it is limitless in its diversity. Chances are that, when you first began traveling, you were drawn to the most distant, mysterious, unfamiliar destinations. On the surface, you had nothing in common with these places or their inhabitants. Human nature propels us insatiably to pursue newness, exoticism, and even novelty. This fuels our interest in other cultures, the allure of foreign tongues, and the romanticism of landscapes different than our own. We want to have our minds flipped sideways, to learn what always existed, just not in our own parameters.

We find ourselves reaching outward to explore, to get to know the “other.” We seek to escape ourselves, to become immersed in other ways of life, of thinking, of being. This is exemplified in the famous contemporary journeys of Bill Bryson, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Chris McCandless. They traipsed into the woods, escaped from failed marriages in ashrams, and swore off money while picking berries in Alaska. While their stories were distinct, they each ventured into the outside world seeking something, anything other than the reality of their own lives. Their commonality, however, was that they each came to know themselves more deeply than they could have in their comfort zone — their hometowns.

Unintentional Biases and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

It’s an unflattering truth, but even the most open-minded of us have our biases and prejudices. No matter where you were born, you were likely handed down a sense of pride and nationalism. Especially if you’ve been raised in the United States, you likely cling onto your cultural roots. It’s not just who you hung out with way back in high school, it’s the people you play poker with, attend church with, invite over to watch Sunday night football. Do they belong to (what you believe is) your same cultural background?

This argument may seem counterintuitive, but bear with me. Examining melting-pot cities like San Francisco, New York, and Miami, there’s still a very clear division of neighborhoods according to ethnicities. There’s Chinatown, Little Italy, The Mission, Little Haiti, and the list goes on.

While these nuclei offer visitors a rich cultural experience and a sense of belonging to those who were exiled from their homelands in generations past, they also perpetuate a fixed sense of identity. It’s quite possible that most people living in these neighborhoods are third generation North Americans, and that clinging so tightly to the traditions they’ve known all of their lives may actually be hindering their sense of self.

It’s important to honor the ancestors forced into slavery on San Francisco’s railroads and the great-grandparents who risked their lives seeking asylum from Castro’s dictatorship. But what if this is only one part of the story? What if you’ve grown up your whole life thinking that your ancestors all came from Vietnam, or Mexico, or Namibia, yet the stories you were told were wrong?

The Power of DNA Testing

In the not-too-distant past, we had to rely on our grandmothers’ shakily hand-drawn family trees and our parents’ far-fetched stories to determine our genealogy. Thankfully, times have changed and our family history doesn’t have to rely on folklore. Sites like ancestry.com are helpful. However, scrolling through thousands of records littered with our parents’ last names can often be misleading. Doing a DNA test, however, can take the guess work out of your research and provide you with relatively quick access to your genetics.

With companies like 23andme, examining your DNA is now easier and more affordable than ever. Just a small saliva sample can determine nearly every nation where your ancestors originated. These tests go back thousands of years, providing a comprehensive view of your lineage.

I have always felt very close to my Mexican roots, and have taken several trips through the country, exploring the cities where my great-grandparents rode the bus to work, bought masa for their tortillas, and danced the night away to rancheras. Traveling throughout Mesoamerica has deepened my understanding of who my predecessors were, and essentially, who I am now. Having family that still lives in Mexico enriches this experience even further. However, what about those places that I’m just inexplicably drawn to?

After having my DNA tested, it turns out that several countries that have always called to me were also part of my heritage. Brazil, Colombia, Spain, the UK, and even Israel. There was a nagging, an obsession, a craving to see these places, and now I knew why. Even if you believe that we become who we are more due to our environment than the genes that have been passed down to us over the centuries, an ancestry trip is a fascinating way to see the world while interacting with people who just might share your same lineage.

Benefits of Ancestry Trips

There are so many advantages to taking a custom ancestry trip — whether you choose to visit one country for a month or opt to fit in as many as possible for a few weeks. Getting to know the customs, religions, physical characteristics, work, and food can reveal much about your own character and help you piece together answers to questions that have plagued you your entire life. That is not to say that you should blame your temper on your “Fighting Irish” great-grandmother, but it could explain why you — and no one else — picked up a knack for the cello or just a bridged nose.

The point is: we are taught to think that we, as humans, are wildly different from one another. Discovering your ancestry, and going a step further to take an ancestry trip, allows you to experience just how similar we are despite our diverse habits and beliefs. People who we may judge, or even dislike, could actually be related to us. It’s so powerful to imagine every single person in our family tree — whether they came from Norway, South Africa, or Iran — and know that our lives wouldn’t be possible if they hadn’t lived or loved. We owe our lives to them, and getting to know their culture is actually a form of honoring who we are as individuals and human beings in general.

Use Your DNA to Plan a Custom Ancestry Trip of a Lifetime

If you’re interested in doing a custom ancestry trip (which you should be), you’re in luck. DNA Unwrapped will do all the legwork for you, from the DNA analysis to the trip planning! Get in contact with them, and get out in the world, walking the same streets your ancestors did!

Thanks for reading. We hope you convinced you it might be interesting to get a DNA analysis done, if nothing else. You might just be surprised by exactly where your ancestors came from.