Visiting Your Ancestral Hometown
By Maureen A. TaylorWhether you go across the state or across the ocean, a visit to your ancestral hometown will yield information you never imagined.
Every year, my mother-in-law travels with her children and grandchildren to Vermont to visit the hometown of her paternal ancestors. This is not her hometown filled with memories of her school years, but it is the place where generations of her forefathers lived and where she spent summers in her youth. It’s not a large town or even a city. Peru, Vermont, consists of a short main street and some scattered homes looking much the way they did in the mid-nineteenth century. A walk down the main street is like stepping back in time.
Our annual itinerary includes a visit to the store, a walk by the church (founded in 1807), and a stop by the cemetery near the town hall to see gravesites of prominent family members.
For a small town, Peru has a fascinating history. The few brave settlers who lived there at the turn of the nineteenth century decided that changing the name from Bromley to Peru would attract new families to the area. Whether the name change meant anything to newcomers and their families is unclear. Regardless, the settlers’ descendants spread throughout the area creating a legacy that would be remembered for generations.
What do you really know about the place your ancestors lived? Relating local history to family history is more than locating the place on a map. Are there special places your ancestors talked about in their letters and diaries? Is there an oral tradition regarding one of these towns?
Genealogist Lynn Betlock knew her paternal great-grandparents met at a restaurant for railroad workers in Hayfield, Minnesota. In her ancestors’ stories, a rather ordinary-looking structure became a grand palace because of its romantic undertones. She took a photograph of the building when she visited Hayfield because of its place in family lore. She believes that Hayfield changed the family’s history when Joe Betlock met his future wife, Johanna Peterson. Because they were from two different backgrounds, Lynn is convinced they never would have met if her great-grandmother hadn’t found employment there as a waitress.
You can rediscover the places your family holds significant, too. If you don’t know where to begin, the National Archives and Records Administration shows you how to use federal documents in your search for family and local history in Our Family, Our Town (NARA, 1987), a book compiled by Timothy Walch.
While my mother-in-law is well acquainted with her family history and has experienced it first-hand during summers with her grandparents, there are lots of details of which she was unaware. For example, her grandparents never told her about her ancestors’ exploits. Only a published local history dispensed the heroic tales of one ancestor who killed wolves that were threatening the town, and only photographs could show her where a stuffed bear stood in the town center for decades.
Here’s how you can revel in your ancestors’ adventures through learning more about the local history of your ancestral hometowns.
Interview Relatives
Ask your relatives what they know about ancestral hometowns and family history. Some introductory questions could be:
Continue your research with books and articles written about the locality. Begin by finding out if the public library system in that area has an online card catalog and search for materials in their holdings or try the online card catalog of the country’s largest library, the Library o f Congress for relevant publications. If you are unable to locate these materials in your area, chances are your public library can borrow books or order copies of articles through its interlibrary loan program. If there is no single volume on the town you’re interested in, try looking at county histories. Even small villages rate a notation in some of these late-nineteenth-century compilations.
If you want to purchase books, try using online booksellers like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, or vendors that specialize in local material. For instance, CyndisList mentions publishers under locality categories. If you visit those hometowns, don’t forget to browse bookstores in the area. Most of them have a local history section.
The Periodical Source Index (PERSI) is one way to locate articles on a particular town. It is an index of genealogical and local history periodicals in the United States and Canada since 1800. Search by surname or locality and then order copies of the articles either through the interlibrary loan program in your town or directly from the Allen County Public Library. Use the instructions on Ancestry.com to make requests. In addition, your public library may have online indexes for searching periodicals. You’ll be surprised at what you can uncover using the standard resources available in most public libraries.
Use what you’ve learned about the town to discover other resources such as city directories and newspapers. City directories will help you identify your ancestors’ occupations and where they lived so that you can walk through their old neighborhood. If you can find newspapers from the area, spend time reading about the concerns of the people in that town at that point in history. City directories and newspapers are usually part of the local history collections at historical societies or l ibraries in your ancestral hometowns. A good finding aid to assist in locating repositories is Juliana Smith’s The Ancestry Family Historian’s Address Book (Ancestry, 1997).
Search for Photographs and Postcards
The expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is certainly true for photographs of ancestral hometowns. Each photograph, engraving, or painting you find shows you glimpses of that town in earlier eras. For instance, several postcard views of Peru, Vermont, show a large stuffed bear under a shelter in the center of the town. The image doesn’t tell me why the bear is there, but it provides a visual clue. Now the challenge is to discover in print or in oral traditions the story behind that image.
During each visit to Vermont, I spend time looking for photographic postcards of Peru to add to my mother-in-law’s growing collection. Since the town is so small, I only expected to find a few, so you can imagine my surprise now that the collection has grown to nearly twenty. Collectible shows that feature postcard vendors and antique shops are the best sources for new material. Search online marketplaces like eBay; you never know what you’ll find. Each image has something different to offer–from a view of the community well to houses and the local hotel that are no longer standing.
You can also find images in printed histories of the area and local historical societies. Be sure to search for any type of visual–engravings, paintings, or photographs–when working on your family research.
Don’t forget to look for images and information online. While the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress has digitized local history collections that includes images, you’ll also find printed material. Click on search tips and learn how to find what you are looking for by using appropriate historical terms and synonyms. There is help if you turn up too few or too many hits.
I didn’t locate any pictures of Peru through the online American Memory Project, but there were six relevant hits from the Journal of the House of Representatives 1789—1873. One of them discussed petitions presented by the town for a post route that was ultimately referred to the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads.
Plan a Heritage Trip
With heritage travel booming, there are now companies that specialize in tours to your European origins or those in the United States, but what could be better than a self-directed tour based on your personal family history? Your genealogy will provide the itinerary with the areas you’ve plotted on the map.
Think of revisiting your ancestral hometowns as a vacation to experience your family history firsthand. While this may mean foregoing other exciting destinations, you’ll be able to brag about some of the smaller towns you visited and how much fun you had without the crowds.
Retracing your ancestors’ lives is as close as you’ll come to being able to time travel. Visit some historic sites, stay at a historic inn, and relax as you delve into your ancestral past. As you explore the towns they lived in, focus on what you know about their lives there. How much do you know about the area when they were there? For instance, placing them in historical context helps you discover new data. My mother-in-law’s ancestors intermarried with the families that originally settled Peru. That means there are genealogical clues in all those family trees as well. Knowing when the town began keeping records, when businesses opened, and how the town changed over time provides a historical timeline in which to place your family. That’s where local history meets family history. Of course, if actual travel is not part of your plans, you can still be an armchair traveler.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
Being an armchair traveler or actual tourist got easier with the vast resources of the Internet. You can use it to find books, images, and contact information for distant cousins who can help you discover these ancestral hometowns without leaving home. Or, employ online information to refine your itinerary and plan your trip. Send away for tourism brochures from the local Chamber of Commerce or look at the town website. When you get stuck on a research problem, turn to the public library in the area for assistance. Since the librarians usually live in the town you’re researching and/or visiting, they will know of other resources.
Follow these simple steps to make your trip a success:
Each time you visit an ancestral hometown, you are creating new memories for future generations. Whether you are an armchair traveler, a virtual tourist, or a visitor to those ancestral hometowns, you’ll want to compile a travelogue of your visit.Collect the images you’ve located, write about your family history discoveries in a journal, annotate your family history with remarks about your discoveries, and include photocopies of newspaper articles, documents, and even city directories and advertisements that pertain to your family. Scrapbook hobbyists put all this material together in a heritage album while genealogists generally create illustrated histories of their family. Take new pictures of the way things look today.
Are you traveling with kids? No problem. Give them an activity kit to help them to capture their own memories of the trip based on their interests, such as disposable cameras, sketch pads, or postcards. While they might think that visiting an ancestral hometown is a boring idea, you can persuade them by letting them participate in the process and include a few non-genealogy related activities. Look at David Weitzman’s My Backyard History Book (Little, Brown and Company, 1975) for ideas on getting kids (and adults) interested in family and local history.
You might become so knowledgeable about these hometowns that they become part of a family tradition much like our family visits to Vermont. You may one day be able to write a history of the town based on your research. Arcadia Publishing might be interested in an illustrated history of the town. Its Images of America Series features regional and local pictorial histories. A complete list of titles appears on the company website, or you can call 888—313—2665 for additional information.
Too Many Places
Sure, my mother-in-law’s family spent generations in Peru, Vermont, but how many families can trace their history to just a couple of hometowns? Most people can probably list a series of towns where they’ve lived but if your ancestors were the migratory type, they settled in several different places–probably too many to research. So how do you decide which towns to explore? You can work backward, tackling each town as you encounter it in your family history research. You can choose to focus on those places that held particular significance for your family like Hayfield, Minnesota, does for the Betlock family. You don’t have to research all the places your ancestors lived, just the ones that interest you. Whether you travel across country following their immigration route or just visit one place, the choice is yours. Bringing the Past to Life
Even if I’ve convinced you to travel to an ancestral hometown, you may still be wondering why you should learn about local history. One reason to delve into the past is to re-capture your lost heritage. Researching family history and ancestral hometowns creates a chain of family links from the past to the present. Also, these towns are part of your history and will help you bring your ancestors’ history to life.
Ask anyone who has walked through a family cemetery or found the house their ancestors once lived in. They’ll tell you about how these visits changed their family research. It transforms your ancestors from names and dates to real people who led lives that resemble your own. If you listen carefully when you visit one of these hometowns, you’ll be able to hear the echoes of those individuals. Even though I’m not a descendant of anyone who lived in Peru, Vermont, I am familiar with my husband’s family history and that town. A walk down the main street is all it takes for my imagination to run wild and my mind to step back in time.
Maureen A. Taylor is the the author of Preserving Your Family Photographs (Betterway, 2001), Uncovering Your Ancestry Through Family Photographs (Betterway 2000) as well as a guide to family history for kids, Through the Eyes of Your Ancestors (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). Her tips for traveling with children appeared in Martha Stewart Living (June 2002). She can be reached at TaylorandStrong.com.
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