Tag Archives: ancestors

GenTraveling – to conferences!

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RT

Hello GenTravelers!

Will you be Gentraveling to a genealogy conference this year?  RootsTech is just over a week away!  Yep, the sea of people in the photo above is what a typical trip to the RootsTech Exhibitor Hall looks like! Crazy huh?

I would highly encourage such GenTraveling!  If you can’t make it to RootsTech, there are plenty of other conferences to consider.  This year,  I plan to attend RootsTech as well as the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference which is being held in Washington DC. this year.  {I’m excited for that!}

Pairing GenTraveling to a conference and a research trip to where an ancestor actually lived is the ultimate win!  Are any of the national conferences this year, anywhere close to where your ancestors lived?  Check out the list below and maybe plan to go!

RootsTech 2019 – February 2 – March 2 in Salt Lake City, Utah

National Genealogical Society conference – May 8-11 in St Charles, Missouri

Southern California Genealogy Jamboree – May 30 – June 2 – in Burbank, California

Federation of Genealogical Societies conference –  August 21-24 – in Washington DC

These are only a few of the major, national conferences; there are plenty of smaller regional or community conferences too.  See what’s happening in the area you want to go GenTraveling to and get busy and plan your trip!

As always, good luck climbing your trees and have a great day!

 

 

GenTraveling – Should we travel to unpleasant locations?

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andersonville

Hello GenTravelers!

If you’ve traced family members back to the nineteenth century, odds are you have some ancestors who fought in the Civil War. I hope you are planning a trip to where they actually lived.  But what about where they actually died?  Many family historians have ancestors that died in places like Andersonville Prison in Georgia.  Do you have any desire to visit there? Nearly 13,000 prisoners died there. Were any of them your ancestors?

Conditions in the Andersonville Prison were atrocious. Understandably, prisoner Robert H. Kellogg wrote, “Can this be hell?” because scenes like this were common:

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There are many such historic sites that conjure up unpleasant feelings. Do we visit these locations in order to firmly remind ourselves of the horrors that occurred there, and to do all we can to never allow those horrors to be repeated?  I hope so.  Just be sure to plan some other wonderful (and uplifting) locations on the itinerary for that GenTraveling trip as well!

Where have you GenTraveled to, that you would consider ‘unpleasant’?

Good luck for successfully researching your ancestors – and be sure to let me know where you are planning your next GenTraveling adventure!

GenTraveling to Guernsey Island

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guernsey

Hello GenTravelers!

In honor of Netflix releasing Guernsey today, I wanted to post about GenTraveling there. (I apologize if any of you haven’t read the book and aren’t excited as I am about the movie coming out! Haha!)

Are there any readers out there that are LUCKY enough to have ancestors from Guernsey? If I had family lines from Guernsey, visiting there would be on the tippy-tippy-top of my GenTraveling bucket list!

One lucky guy,  author George Matheson, wrote about his GenTravels to Guernsey in the March/April 2015 edition of YourGenealogyToday magazine. It is an excellent article with lots of tips and advice for anyone planning a visit there.  His excitement about the island is contagious and he begins his article explaining the thrill of finding his ancestral farmhouse:

“Holding an 1878 sepia photograph, I strolled along a quiet ruett (or country lane) until there in front of me was the same image: the old farmhouse in which my grandfather was born, with the steeple of the church in which he was baptized rising in the background.  That was in 2009. It was my first trip to Guernsey and my first taste of the excitement of what is widely referred to as “Genealogical Tourism” or as I prefer to call it “Ancestral Tourism”. It’s a curious notion — this idea of going back to a place where someone on the family tree once lived.”

If you are planning a visit to Guernsey Island, be sure to go read this excellent article.  Mr. Matheson included an entire page of resources, travel tips, accommodation recommendations etc.  I believe he mentioned he’d been back 5 times, so I’d say he is somewhat of an expert.  His closing words sum up many GenTraveler’s feelings as well:

“Genealogical/Ancestral tourism is, for me, not just about finding a farmhouse or a tombstone, but about exploring and enjoying the ‘world’ my ancestors lived in and seeing what that ‘world’ has become.”

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So, are you planning your GenTraveling yet? Where do you plan to go? Be sure to share your GenTraveling Bucket list on our Bucket List Page.  GenTraveling: It’s the Real Deal Thrill!

 

 

 

 

 

GenTraveling near Montreal

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lachine

Hello GenTravelers!

Sometimes GenTraveling takes us to sad but significant historical sites. When my husband and I traveled to Canada a couple of months ago, we visited an area where, 329 years ago, was the site of the worst massacre in Canadian history.  The Lachine massacre happened on August 4-5, 1689. Reports vary widely regarding the number of deaths that occurred.  The Lachine Massacre monument website states 200 settlers were killed by 1500 Iroquois (link HERE).  Wikipedia states there were 72 deaths. Whatever the number of casualties, this terrible event is obviously included in many family histories.  My husband’s ancestors were involved – some were killed and some were captured. Fortunately his 6th great-grandmother, after being held captive for about 12 years was released after The Great Peace Treaty of 1701 and returned to her husband and subsequently began their family – in which my husband descends from.

The plaque pictured above on St. Joseph Street, Lachine, Quebec says:

During the night of the 4-5 August 1689, fifteen hundred Iroquois landed at Lachine and placed themselves in small groups near all the houses along the shore. At a given signal the massacre began; two hundred persons perished and one hundred and twenty were taken into captivity. The year 1689 was long known as “The year of the massacre”.

GenTraveling, and genealogy in general, uncovers both the happy and the sad, the precious and the terrible. History doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have a filter.

What sad but significant sites have you GenTraveled to? Or plan to travel to?

 

Literary GenTraveling

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Hello GenTravelers!

In previous posts (for instance THIS post) I’ve mentioned that when I can’t be off GenTraveling, I like to read and escape on literary travels – especially if they are historical or genealogy-themed stories. I was NOT expecting my book club’s pick this month to be anything of the sort (just look at the cover – it does not scream ‘historical’, right???)!  :o)  But I was pleasantly surprised that a major part of the book was about Ellis Island. Just as GenTraveling gives me a greater sense of where and how my ancestors lived, this book gave me a better sense of how it would be to immigrate to the U.S. in the early 1900’s.  The author, Susan Meissner, was an award-winning journalist before switching to novel writing and you can tell she had done her historical research.

The book’s story-line jumps from the tragic 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to the 10-year anniversary of the tragic 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attack.  I enjoyed this particular literary escape quite a bit.  Let me know if any of you have read it.  AND, as always, please send any book recommendations my way! Have a great day.

GenTraveling and linguistics

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nicknames

Fair warning:  This blog post, as it relates to GenTraveling, is well…a bit of a stretch! :o) But really, if you think about it, language sort of travels, right? Words morph into other words all of the time!

I recently listened to a podcast where a linguist explained how Bob became the nickname for Robert and how Meg became the nickname for Margaret.  So, since these words (names) that are relevant to genealogy do some traveling/morphing, I thought I’d share this podcast with all of you, just because I found it interesting – even though the GenTraveling theme is a bit of a stretch.  You don’t mind do you?

Here’s the link to the podcast…(the name morphing explanations starts at about the 8:55 minute mark).

Lexicon Valley Podcast

After you have a listen, how about you go find all the Robert (Bobs) in your tree and start planning a GenTraveling trip to where they actually lived? :o)

 

GenTraveling – Friday Finds

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fridayfinds

Hello! I have some Fabulous Friday Finds to share with you!

All over the internet, there are articles about places where you might want to GenTravel to or some other aspect about GenTraveling! Each Friday I hope to share links to some of those articles. There might be one link, or if my time management skills are stellar that week, and I have time to hunt for more, I’ll link to more than just one. :o)

Here is this week’s:

This GenTraveler visited Williamsburg, Virginia multiple times (who says you should only go to your ancestral stomping grounds only once?)!  On her second trip, she had learned more about her genealogical connections to Williamsburg.  That’s how it goes – more research means even more reasons to return! If you have Virginia roots, you might want to go read about her travels.

Have a great weekend! Best wishes for finding those ancestors.  Are you planning your GenTraveling yet? Where do you plan to go? Be sure to share your GenTraveling Bucket list on our Bucket List Page.  GenTraveling: It’s the Real Deal Thrill!

Tim Ferriss recommends GenTraveling!

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Check out this video (at about the 3:50 mark) and hear what type of travel Tim Ferriss recommends! Yeah, I bet you can guess based on this blog title eh?!?

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So, are you planning your GenTraveling yet? Where do you plan to go? Be sure to share your GenTraveling Bucket list on our Bucket List Page.  GenTraveling: It’s the Real Deal Thrill!

GenTraveling in Ireland

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lisaanddonna

Hello GenTravelers!

I have a funny little coincidence story to share…

In this photo, Lisa Louise Cook is interviewing, (who I now know to be Donna Moughty) at RootsTech a couple of years ago.  I’m pretty sure I walked past this sound booth when this was happening.  Little did I know they were chatting about GenTraveling! At RootsTech 2017, the “Media Corner” was this clear glass sound booth box right smack in the middle of the Expo Hall. I remember walking by and noticing Lisa. When I later watched this interview on YouTube I, of course, was VERY interested, because they were discussing research trips to Ireland.  Donna takes a group of researchers to Ireland every October.  You can check out more info about that HERE.  Additionally, Donna shares a lot of great information about researching in Ireland on her site (whether you book to go with her or on your own!) If you have Irish family, be sure to visit Donna’s site and start planning a GenTraveling researching trip! It’s the real deal thrill!

GenTraveling – Friday Finds

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fridayfinds

Hello! I have some Fabulous Friday Finds to share with you!

All over the internet, there are articles about places where you might want to GenTravel to or some other aspect about GenTraveling! Each Friday I hope to share links to some of those articles. There might be one link, or if my time management skills are stellar that week, and I have time to hunt for more, I’ll link to more than just one. :o)

Here is this week’s:

I enjoyed reading an older post at Family Sleuther as he explained how he had traveled to Illinois and mistakenly thought he didn’t have any family roots there, so he didn’t pursue any research while he was there.  OOPS! It wasn’t until after he returned home that he found he DID have family ties to that location.  The rest of his post gives some good tip on how to have a successful GenTraveling research trip – including preparing charts so he doesn’t make that mistake again.

Another post on that same site impressed me: The day after the Family Sleuther’s grandmother’s funeral, he traveled across five states, nearly 2,200 miles in total, and paid his respects at the graves of 36 direct ancestors! How cool!

Have a great weekend! Best wishes for finding those ancestors.  Are you planning your GenTraveling yet? Where do you plan to go? Be sure to share your GenTraveling Bucket list on our Bucket List Page.  GenTraveling: It’s the Real Deal Thrill!