Mix family history research and genealogy with travel and you get the chance for a meaningful visit to see where your ancestors lived.

The ancestry travel trend is not new for me. I’ve been planning ancestral tours and genealogy road trips since 1991, and I love it. I also think there are more genealogy travel companies around today than back then, so I guess I’m not alone.

Here are some tips to help get your genealogical vacation off to a great start. As you will soon see, I have a lot of opinions and lessons from experience, and I share them freely in hopes of helping you.

How to plan a genealogy trip

1. Make sure there’s something for everyone

Unless everyone in your family cares about going on ancestry and genealogy trips as much as you do, heritage travel can be boring. As the trip planner and unofficial guide, you need to learn about more than the genealogical information. Either take on the job of finding out everyone’s interests and making the trip fun for them, or give this part of the planning to someone else.

2. Get the genealogy research right

It’s shocking how many family trees are based on mistakes. If family history research is new to you, take your time and learn how to do it carefully. Just because you find what you think is your family tree online doesn’t mean it’s actually a good family tree. There’s a lot of just plain wrong information on some of the most popular family tree sites.

If you want ongoing help with the best way to do family tree research, my newsletter and Facebook group are two great places to start, and they’re free. I love providing genealogy how-to advice on finding your family tree, so don’t be afraid to ask.

3. Be open-minded

Genealogy travel doesn’t have to be strictly about your direct ancestors. When you set out to track your ancestry, especially for a trip, it’s a mistake to be so limited. Always think about the people your ancestors lived with. This includes siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbours, classmates, distant relatives, prominent people in the ancestral village, and so on.

One way to think about this is to consider the people in your own life. Try making a list of 50 or 100 people you know, or have known at some point in your life, and you’ll soon realize it’s much more interesting when you are willing to include more than just your father, his father, his father, etc.

4. Adoption is a fact, not a barrier

Some family members, past and present, may have been adopted and therefore not be biologically related to everyone else. Unless you are involved in some question where genetics matter, such as an organ transplant or a contested throne, the idea of being a blood relative doesn’t matter much, in my opinion.

If you’re adopted, you get to decide what parts of your family tree interest you and what parts don’t, just like everyone else. Look at your adoptive family, your birth family, both, or even neither if you like. Your heritage is rich and interesting, and it’s your trip, so you decide what to focus on. There are no genealogy police.

5. Treat anyone born in the last 110 years with care for their privacy

As amateur and professional genealogists know, there are some records that are not public until a certain number of years have gone by. This is mainly to protect the privacy of people who may still be living.

My suggestion is that you do not put any information about family members online unless they were born over 110 years ago or they have been dead for about 30 years. I also would hold off if they have close family who are still living, even if it’s been over 30 years since the death.

Would you want your own family’s information posted publicly? Don’t do it to others. There are no hard and fast rules for this, just be sensitive to keeping information private if releasing it might lead to embarrassment or identity theft for a living person.

6. Start making a list of interesting things you learn

Eventually you are going to have to specifically plan your heritage tour. Start keeping a list of all the interesting places you come across in your research. Make a note of who the place is connected to, and a note of why you think it might be important to visit.

7. Think about themes you want to pursue on the trip

Genealogy tourism is a very broad category. Once you get into doing family history research, a lot of topics turn up. You might wonder how dairy farmers lived in the 1900s in Minnesota, or how Scottish children were educated in the 1800s.

Maybe heritage tours based on your religion or your ethnicity appeal to you. Perhaps you’ll want to explore battlefields and war memorials. There is literally no limit to the many possible rabbit holes you might go down. Start paying attention to the ones that you find most interesting and also the most emotionally appealing.

Keep notes, because eventually you will rank the topics and build genealogy tours around them.

8. Start learning about your ancestors’ homes

For some people, “home” means a house. For others, an entire village, region, or country is the ancestral homeland. You get to decide this. How much of the trip do you want to spend on seeing very specific places (like houses)? How much do you want to devote to getting a flavour for the entire region or country? Think about the mix.

9. Start learning about the region and country

A family history trip isn’t just about history, it’s also about geography.

Do you know what the land looks like? Is it mountainous? Flat? Is it hot or cold? Urban or rural? As with any kind of travel, start gathering travel tips. A genealogy trip is travel, after all. You want to know what opportunities there are before you go.

What is the region famous for? What do the mainstream tour guides, books, and travel blogs feature?

10. Connect with the family history groups in your destination

There are family history groups and societies all over. Some are regional, e.g. the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society in England, while some are specifically for a particular group, e.g. the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia.

Since the focus of this article is to help you plan a trip, I’m suggesting you get familiar with the family history scene where you are going. Consider becoming a member. It usually gives you easier access to people who share your interests, and it supports the work of these valuable groups.

11. Do your research now, not on the trip

The last thing you want to do on your vacation is to spend it in the archives or the county courthouse. My opinion, and I hold to this pretty strongly, is that you should not waste your time doing research that you could have done from home or paid someone to do before your trip. Why?

First, you are paying for a hotel and you paid for the transportation to get wherever you’re going. It’s probably cheaper to pay for your own or a professional’s research from home. Second, you would like to have the information long before you get to the destination, so you can use it in planning. Third, you may never be here again. See the things that are only available to you here, on the ground, now. Fourth, taking your travelling companions to the archives is the kiss of death and you will hate yourself for it once you realize what you’ve done to your family and friends.

12. There is a time when doing research on site is a great idea

I do have a big exception to the “no research” rule. If you are planning a genealogy research trip, you’re probably travelling alone (as I often do), or with other researchers.

If you love research as a recreational activity (also true for me), and if it’s the thing you most want to do for at least part of the time on the trip, then do it! Sometimes there is an original document you won’t have a chance to see again in your life. For some of us, there’s a certain thrill in finding the real thing.

13. Keep very good notes

Keeping notes is not my strong suit. There, I’ve said it. Now I will say what we all should do, and I hope you will do it. If you already have a system that works for you, ignore me and stick to what’s working.

For everyone who doesn’t have a good system yet, get one notebook, just one, paper notebook. Try for one with numbered pages. (I like the Leuchtturm1917, which also has index pages at the front). Immediately put your contact information on the front page.

Keep in mind that when (not if, when) someone finds this notebook, they will have access to everything you’ve written down, so don’t put your bank details or passwords in here. This is your genealogy research book. Don’t get fancy.

Every day when you start researching, write down the date, the place (even if you are at home), the research question you are working on, what websites you are using or what paper records you are looking at, a brief summary of what you found, and where you are recording the details. I have a guide coming up on how to do this, so feel free to subscribe to my “free stuff” list if you’d like a copy when it’s ready.

14. Back up your notes frequently

As a back-up, take a snapshot of your notes with your phone at the end of each session. It’s easy enough to store them in a free Google Photos account. This is what you’ll have in the event you (gasp) lose your notebook.

15. Remember this is going to be fun

I just realized I’m slipping into lawyer-teacher mode and making everything sound very serious. Of course, getting the facts right is important, but the whole project is meant to be fun. Genealogy is the second most popular thing on the internet after something with a little more vice to it. We who do family history research love the thrill of the chase.

16. Start chatting with your travel agent

I have a few travel agency friends and I know they can each do many things. Ideally, your travel agent will be interested in the purpose of your trip and will help you build an itinerary that works for your whole group. See Tip #1: Make sure there’s something for everyone. A travel agent can help with this. I’m happy to recommend a travel agent who loves genealogy travel.

17. Consider your mobility limitations (if any)

Some genealogy trips are to crowded places. Driving and parking may not be as easy as what you are used to. When travelling anywhere new, you can’t guarantee you’ll be able to pull up to the door and park in a reserved spot. In fact, it may be much easier not to drive.

I mention this because you can still do genealogy travel with mobility limitations or other accessibility needs, but don’t assume conditions will be the same as at home. Include accessibility research in your trip planning.

18. Make connections early

Family history has helped me make some wonderful friends in different parts of the world. I’m very happy to say I’ve had the chance to meet a number of them in person. If we’re related, it’s quite distantly, but we share the same interests in genealogy and it often turns out, we share other things in life too.

In order to have friends, you need to invest energy and sincere feeling in the friendship. This isn’t something you can force, and it’s not for everyone. I would suggest you tell your contacts you’re planning a trip, even if it’s a couple of years away.

It isn’t necessary for them to invite you home. You can suggest they meet up with you at whatever place is on your agenda, such as a park or museum. This is a very individual thing but if you leave it to the last minute, you don’t give others any time to prepare for your arrival, and their schedules may already be full. It would be a shame not to meet up just because of bad timing.

19. Don’t bother people but do be politely bold

This is a bit of a challenge: when you find the house your great-great-grandparents lived in, do you knock on the door, or not?

If at all possible, write to the occupants beforehand and let them know of your interest. Their response simply is what it is.

You can go to the house and politely, discreetly take photos of yourselves out front (in the public area), even if you get no reply to your letter. If the occupant is around, you’ll have a chance to introduce yourself as the person who wrote to them.

Make use of whatever local knowledge or contacts you have to help figure out whether the trip to the old neighbourhood is a great idea or not.

20. Use Google Street View

I use Google Street View all the time. I look at what there is on the ground today, once I have found an address in my family tree. If the site has been completely redeveloped, I know not to bother going there, but I can look for other places nearby that may still be intact and relevant.

21. Fall in love with maps

The maps we used to get at service stations are good for showing roads and towns, but there are much more interesting, more detailed maps available. Once you know how to read a detailed topographic map, you won’t go back.

22. Find out what old maps are available

I do a lot of ancestry research in England, and for maps there I often use a website called old-maps.co.uk. It’s an example of a site that provides reproduction historical maps. There are other similar sites for England, and for other places. Looking at old maps and comparing them to today helps complete your research picture.

23. Use pictures

A friend of mine had a family keepsake: a photo of his grandfather and brothers on leave in Paris during the First World War. When a group of us travelled to Paris almost 80 years later, we were able to re-create the scene by using the photo to find the exact spot. That was a fun use of an old picture. Before you go on your genealogy vacation, take pictures or scans of your old photos so you have them handy on your phone. You could also carry photocopies of the old photos as these will be bigger and easier to use than an image on a small phone screen.

24. Decide on your priorities

After all your research and planning, there will be far more things you want to do than you can humanly do. If not, you need to go back and make your list longer.

I suggest you begin by knowing and accepting that you will only see a fraction of what interests you. Rank your list in a way that makes sense for you. It could be “Must see”, “Want to see”, and “Nice to see”, or “High, Medium, Low”, whatever works for you. Then map out where you will go, day by day.

25. Keep the magic alive after you get back

The trip doesn’t have to end when you get home. Consider extending the experience by making a scrapbook. Try writing a report or a letter for your children, telling them what you did and how the trip felt for you.

Think of yourself as an explorer of new territory, coming back to explain it to the rest of your nation, because that’s what you’re doing. You are the one who has chosen to link the past to the present. It may be that no one else is interested now, but at some point in their lives, they may be. Your experience is important. I hope you will treasure and savour it before, during, and after the actual travel.

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