The Tracking Game

Searching for Roots Abroad Is Challenging and Fun

By Marian Behan Hammer

As a family vacation activity, discovering the towns and villages of immigrant ancestors has become a popular and fun thing to do--a fascinating detective project that can lead to unexpected pleasures. Most countries encourage and help travelers play the game, inviting us to come and dig among musty records. Trouble is, few of us know where or how to begin our search.

"My interest in ancestors began while my family and I were visiting my brother in Detroit," said Jim Dolan of Yacolt, Washington. "It was Memorial Day and we all went to the cemetery to place a flag on the grave of my paternal grandfather. My children asked a lot of questions about their great grandfather, questions neither my brother nor I could answer. We weren't even sure in which war he had fought. Since then I've visited older relatives who supplied me with all sorts of needed information, and next summer my family and I will travel to Cork, Ireland where grandfather lived as a boy. Hopefully, I'll be able to absorb some of my grandfather's culture and maybe even find a cousin or two."

Dolan took the right steps before flying off to Ireland--first interviewing his parents and other older family members. Frequently, older relatives have photographs, house records, wills, and family letters they are willing to share. They may know of church records where baptismal, confirmation, marriage, and death records were kept with scrupulous care in 18th and 19th century family Bibles.

Don't overlook cemeteries where family members are buried. Some old tombstones have an entire family history engraved on them. Books are available in most Genealogical Society libraries that list cemetery locations, along with quadrants and lot numbers.

If you can't get information from older relatives, there are other ways to start your search. Perhaps the best organized aid to amateur and professional genealogists alike is the Genealogical Society of Salt Lake City, established by the Mormon Church. There you can search nearly 1.5 million rolls of microfilmed records from archives from every state and most foreign countries, more than 195,000 books and eight million family group record forms. Floors of the huge complex are organized geographically. Family history centers, at Mormon churches in most cities, can arrange loans of the Salt Lake City records.

Among the most helpful information in Salt Lake City and in the U.S. National Archives are census records and steamship passenger arrival records. Census records from 1790 onwards are available to the public. They reveal birthplaces, and, after 1900, immigration dates. Passenger records tell not only when and where an immigrant arrived in this country but from which foreign port he departed and sometimes his birthplace. Other sources to research are U.S. military records, social security records, places of employment, school records, fraternities, deeds, and obituaries--and don't forget the Internet.

However, according to Jack Decker, a member of the Genealogical Society of Oregon, you should keep in mind while reading old documents that meanings of words and the spelling of many surnames change over the years. "Letters may have been added or dropped," he says, "and it is not uncommon to find family names spelled several different ways."

For example, Margaret Floto Meyer discovered that in her ancestor search her maiden name had once been spelled Floteau. When her great-great-grandfather entered the U.S. an immigration officer dropped the French spelling of his name in favor of a more phonetic sounding one, and the family has continued to use the shorter spelling every since.

Not all searches for family records are successful. The fun is in the hunt: putting everything together is like working on a giant jigsaw puzzle. Eventually, data, facts, names, and dates fit together and fall into place to give you a picture of your family. The reward is worth the effort. Just walking the paths our ancestors once trod, experiencing life in their town, perhaps visiting the house where they lived or having a drink in the same pub in which they drank, helps us to imagine life in their times and gives us a strong sense of continuity and belonging.

Ancestor Searches

U.S. National Archives and Records Service, 8th and Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20408; U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Washington, DC; The Genealogical Society of Salt Lake City, 35 NW Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84115. International Vital Records Handbook by Thomas Jay Kemp lists addresses of most foreign genealogical archival services including: Register General, Joyce House, 8-11 Lombard St. E., Dublin 2, Ireland; Director General, 2nd Division, Civil Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Justice, 1-1-1 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100, Japan; Standesant [town], Germany; Le Marie, [town], France; Russian-American Genealogical Archival Service (RAGAS), P.O. Box 236, Glen Echo, MD 20812.

MARIAN BEHAN HAMMER writes from Camas, WA.