A PERSONAL SORT OF TIME TRAVEL: ANCESTRY TOURISM

As people age, many grow interested in tracing their family heritage and group traditions back to their origins

As people age, many trace their heritage and origins

IN APRIL, 78-year-old Sheila Albert, a retired psychotherapist from Santa Rosa, California, US, and her niece, 60year-old Terry Pew, found themselves standing in front of the ruins of a stone house in Ireland where Albert believes her great-great-grandmother once lived. “I felt like I came home,” she says. Albert, whose ancestors emigrated to the US during the potato famine of the late 1840s, found the house with the help of a genealogy and touring company called My Ireland Family Heritage, which arranged a two-day tour. It was not the first time the two women had pursued their roots: in 2014, they took a weeklong car trip through Minnesota and Wisconsin, where they toured cemeteries researching their family tree.

As many people age, they grow interested in tracing their family heritage and group traditions back to their origins. “Ancestral travel is a way of connecting oneself with their progenitors and finding one’s rootedness in a confusing and fast-paced world,” Dallen J Timothy, a professor at Arizona State University, wrote in an email. The sentiment crosses many ethnic groups. The motivations of those who make these trips vary, as does what they find. Travellers usually combine such trips with other forms of sightseeing, but, along the way, they may gain a greater appreciation of the obstacles their ancestors faced and a deeper sense of who they are and where they come from.

For some, long-ago stories propel wanderlust. Growing up, 67-year-old Maryann Rosenbaum, a retired schoolteacher in the Chicago area, heard stories from her grandmother about a house next to a pond where her mother was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia. She found that house on Richardson Avenue 20 years ago by following her grandmother’s description. “It’s kind of like being a detective,” Rosenbaum says. More recently, she received a trove of letters and photos from a distant relative that reignited her curiosity about her maternal grandfather, who emigrated from Scotland to Nova Scotia and then to the US. Last September, she and her husband, Frank, booked a 10-day trip.

They toured Edinburgh, Inveraray Castle and the Isle of Skye, but she was particularly set on visiting Bellshill, an industrial area about 10 miles south-east of Glasgow where her grandfather lived. “The tour guide was afraid I was setting myself up for disappointment,” she says. She wasn’t. She drew similarities between Bellshill, Sydney and Gary, Indiana, where the family eventually settled in the early 1920s.

“Travel experiences can show how a family developed, what family traits were dependent on location, why a family chose to migrate and how they made a choice of occupation,” says George G Morgan, the author of How to Do Everything: Genealogy. But not every ancestry tourist is going to find the proverbial Rosetta Stone, he cautions. They also need to set expectations for what they want to see and to ask a guide, “What will you be able to deliver?”

Seventy-four-year-old Carl Tiedt is a retired manufacturer from Springfield, Missouri, and Civil War hobbyist. He has German ancestry and began searching genealogy sites over two decades ago, looking for relatives who fought in that war. Research on Ancestry.com and other sites turned up three great-uncles who were Union soldiers. Still, “nobody ever recorded where the family lived before they emigrated and why they came,” he says. His parents never taught him German, saying only, “We had a hard time in America until we learned English.” Two years ago, he visited Germany with his wife Barbara. His tour company, European Focus, recommended a genealogist, who found the house where his great-grandparents lived in Bergen, Lower Saxony. The record of its property transfer indicates they may have sold the house to finance passage to the US. Tiedt still doesn’t know why they left.

“In genealogy, you never know what you are going to find or if you are going to find what you hoped to find,” says Jeanne L Bloom, president of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, a Washington-based organisation that was not involved in planning Tiedt’s trip. “You can’t guarantee results.”

He also met a fifth cousin once removed on his mother’s side, Ida Müller, now 79 years old, along with her two sons, who are in their 50s. They spent the day together and toured the family winery. Tiedt saw the church where his grandmother was baptised. He hopes the younger cousins and their children will visit the US next year. “I don’t want to lose this connection ,” he says. Tied test imatesthe trip cost about $15,000 for two, including transportation, meals and lodging.

Hiring a professional genealogist can be expensive; many searchesstartonline.MyHeritage.com, an Israeli company with offices in Utah, said five years ago that it had 4.6 million baby boomers out of 58 million users. This year, that total reached to 9.6 million baby boomers out of 84 million users. A basic package is free; a complete annual package is $175.

Ancestry.com, which has two million members worldwide, offers monthly memberships from $19.99 to $49.99 and six-month memberships from $99 to $199. Familysearch.org, under the auspices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is free. Genealogy popularity may swell further. In 2012, Global Industry Analysts, a market research company in San Jose, Califor nia, estimated the global market for genealogical products and services at $2.3 billion in 2014, rising to $4.3 billion by 2018.

A May trip to Germany for 67-year-old Audrey Goodman of Bergen County, New Jersey, began unexpectedly with a message about some books, left last

fall on her husband’s (Clockwise from left) This kind of travel makes people gain a deeper sense of who they are and where they come from; genealogy websites help people trace their roots; and it’s advisable to invest in a good tour guide for such trips blog.

The message was from Antje Strahl, a historian at the University of Rostock, who oversees restitution of books that were confiscated by the Nazis and later became part of the university’s library collection.

The books bore the name Malzer, the maiden name of Goodman’s late mother, who left Germany in 1937 at age 20 as a Jewish refugee, living first in England before coming to the US.

Strahl invited Goodman to Germany to receive the books in a formal ceremony. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to go,” says Goodman, who grew up hearing “We don’t travel to Germany.” Still, she felt the journey would close a chapter.

At the restitution ceremony, attended by members of the university community, Goodman accompanied by her husband, Michael, and daughter, Amanda, spoke about her family’s escape from the Nazis and influences she remembered from growing up in Washington Heights in Manhattan, including recollections about German food delicacies.

Afterwards, the family travelled 375 miles south by car to Bad Königshofen, a farming community where her grandparents once owned a grain distribution business. The pastoral atmosphere was a surprise, but again, it had never been discussed. Her son, Brett, joined them there.

Through a tour guide, the family gained access to the apartment overlooking the main square where Goodman’s “mother and her parents sat so many years ago”, she says. The family toured the town and nearby cemetery to lear n about the former Jewish community. “I’m happy to have it behind me,” she says of the experience.

Albert, there tired psychotherapist, want store turn to Ireland and is now delving into books like The Graves are Walking by John Kelly and The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd. “These are the stories of my ancestors,” she says. NYT

Ancestry tourism can show how a family developed, what family traits were dependent on location, why a family chose to migrate and how they made a choice of occupation