Who are you?

Especially as we get older, we may be drawn to figure out how we link older generations with new. I know I've felt it.

The exodus from Europe to the U.S. in the 1800s and 1900s offers the perfect target audience to reconnect with "lost" relatives (many of whom exist only in digitized church documents, having met any number of tragic ends). It's similar to the ideal target audience for labor-hungry immigrants that inspired U.S. companies to offer discounted or even fully funded travel from the Old World to the New World hundreds of years ago. A quick Google search confirms that, for a price, companies today will custom-design tours for you that include a meet-up with someone who may be a relative. You might be able to "walk in the footsteps" of your ancestors, with all today's conveniences yet none of yesterday's hardships like the almost-certain death from war, political changes or incurable disease that people before you faced every day, living - and dying - with each of them.

Having a theme to your travel is intriguing, and it offers its own structure. I've done a respectable bit of this already and I plan to do more, although less insistently than I have I have in the past. It's fascinating to let genealogy guide you back to the long-ago origins of you; it may answer some of your hot questions, or it may not answer any (and in not answering your questions, it may answer your questions).

I was lucky to travel to New York City, where my great grandfather landed when he arrived from a famously war-torn town in Alsace-Lorraine. I was even luckier to travel to some of the corners of Alsace-Lorraine as a remembrance of my dad after he died, visiting the towns and areas our people had left as they migrated (mostly) north to become a family. I think I'd love to sit down with my great-grandfather and learn more about his journey here. But would a circa-1800s, devoutly religious male even talk with a modern, agnostic female? Probably not.

Be aware that as you travel, you may learn that some family legends were based more on emotion than fact. And that's OK. What you learn on your travels may free you from more than it resolves, which is also OK.

Travel on. Let the learning continue!

Haguenau - France