A big part of genealogy and travel is figuring out where your ancestors came from. Unless you are an Indigenous person, your ancestors arrived from elsewhere. In order to visit your ancestral homeland, you need to know where that is.
A lot of people have a vague idea of where their family came from, but they aren’t sure. Now there’s no one around to ask!
Genealogy research may be able to answer the question fairly quickly. Sometimes, though, it’s not quite so easy. War re-draws national boundaries and destroys records. Criminals, bigamists, and people who just want to start over sometimes change their names without telling anyone. These deceptive things are harder to do in our century, but trust me, the historical record is full of examples.
Some of us will find it easy to know what country our ancestors came from. For others, it may take a lot of guessing and detective work.
Is DNA the answer? I can only say, “Maybe”. It’s a big topic, but the short answer is that DNA for genealogy often reveals an ethnic mix, not just a single country of origin. Some people do find close matches, but at this point it’s not a guarantee. (Far from it.) I personally have privacy concerns about DNA testing but I will leave that whole topic for another day. Let’s agree on this point: DNA might be helpful, but don’t count on it to have the answers you need right away.
What else can you do? You are looking at a slim family tree and asking, “Where is my family from?”. It would be nice if you could just push a button and reliably trace your family tree for free online, but it’s not usually that simple.
Here are some tips.
Use whatever family history is available already
If your family origins are truly unknown to you, you may think there’s no family history available already. That might be true, but even tiny scraps of memories or rumours could help you at some point, so don’t give up. You might find that someone else has already done reliable genealogical work. You have to be cautious because there are lots of errors online, but still, it’s a start.
As soon as you begin your own ancestry work, I always recommend you keep one genealogy research notebook so all your information and research stays together. Start a page in your book to answer just this question: Where do my family and I think we came from?
As soon as you have an answer to that (which may take a millisecond), write it down. Also write down why you think your family is from there.
Of course, you might have many answers to the question. If you live in Louisiana, you might say, “France, Canada, Spain, England, and the Caribbean”, for example. In Western Canada, it might be, “Ukraine, China, and Blackfoot”. The combinations are endless.
Return to that page in your notebook and add to it anytime you have even the vaguest thought about where your people came from. You may start to recall distant memories, nothing specific perhaps, but clues.
Look at your last name, and other last names in your family
Your last name gives a huge clue to your origins, but it can also take you very far off course.
You might be surprised at how much information there is available on surnames. If you do a search online for where your last name originated, like every other search, it will likely turn up some good information and some absolute rubbish. Keep an open mind. Don’t accept or reject anything unless you have a reason to, but do keep a note in your genealogy research notebook, of anything interesting you discover.
Now look at your first name(s)
Are there names that run in your family? Were you named after a particular relative?
Just as with surnames, first names and middle names give clues. Maria, Marie, and Mary are variations of the same name. They suggest a religious connection to Christianity, especially Catholicism, and each points to different possible countries of origin.
The further back in time you go, the more ancestors’ names you will collect. It’s also more likely that the names will be more closely tied to certain places and languages. Today, we use names because we like them, whether or not they historically belong to our culture. That wasn’t always the case.
A warning about names
It’s well known that when people arrived in their new country, they sometimes changed their names. It wasn’t always done by choice.
Names get changed for all kinds of reasons, so again, the further back you can get with your research, the better chance you have of finding the original family names of your ancestors.
Here’s another warning: the census records, passenger lists, and other sources you may come across often have mistakes. Think about how these lists were created. One busy person had the job of writing down people’s names as he heard them. There wasn’t time for spelling, and besides, the person dictating the name may not have been able to spell. They may have spoken a different language. They may even have lied, or on a whim, given themselves a new name.
Always be a bit of a sceptic until multiple sources give you confidence in the information you’re working with.
Is your appearance a clue to your genealogy?
I don’t think we can say that any one “look” belongs to just one group of people in the world, but physical appearances can certainly help narrow down the regions where a person’s ancestors might have come from. If people from Japan have said you look Japanese to them, that is worth noting. It doesn’t prove anything but it opens a line of questioning you might want to follow up at some point.
What kinds of objects and furniture were in your family home(s)?
Your ancestors may not have brought any possessions with them but over the course of their lives, they may have collected a few things. Even their preferences in curtain materials and upholstery colours might be a clue to where they came from.
If they had nice dishes, were the dishes from England? France? Germany? You may not know but jot down (or sketch if you like) whatever you remember of familiar household objects. Think about heirlooms and antiques, but also think about the every day useful things – kitchen ware, outdoor tools, farm implements, and so on.
After you have taken time to notice something, and locked that memory into your brain by making a note or sketch, that little piece of information might pop up at an unexpected time. One day you’ll be in a museum and you’ll say to yourself, “That looks like my grandfather’s scythe”. Then you can read the label and learn something. Maybe immigrants from Poland brought this kind of tool to the United States in the 1870s. This is how serendipity comes into family history. Prepare yourself and you’ll get more of it.
If you have photographs, look for clues in clothing and hairstyles
Just like household objects can help connect a family to a place, so can their choices in clothing and hair. Men’s facial hair might be typical of their homeland, or their father’s homeland.
Never give up hope of finding a photo, either. The Internet is an amazing resource, and the information available grows all the time.
What churches were in your family’s past?
People change religion more often than you might think. If your family attends church now, how and when did that start? Does anyone remember the family changing churches, or changing religions?
Are there any prayers, books, holidays, or religious objects that you can remember?
FANs, Friends, Associates, and Neighbours
The people in your family had their own social networks just as we do today. You don’t need the Internet to have personal connections.
Another page (or several) in your genealogy research journal could be used to capture memories and information about FANs that might help fill in the gaps about your family’s past.
It’s hard to produce a list on demand, but if you quietly reflect on a question, like, “How did the family make a living?” you might find bits and pieces bubbling to the surface. Don’t overload your brain. Set aside time now and then to ask yourself mind-jogging questions, and then just see what happens.
Of course, if you have any old letters, Christmas cards, photos, or mementoes from friends, work, school, church, anything, start looking for themes. You are trying to piece together an idea of when and where your family lived, before they (or at least, you) ended up where you now are.
People often migrate because they have a connection with the new place. It might be a slim connection, but there is often something. A cousin’s brother’s friend went there 15 years ago and started a business, so your ancestor went over hoping to get a job with him. The connection between your two families may have ended long ago, but there might be someone today who is trying to figure out their side of the shared history. In your research, make room to check out FANs when you find them.
One of the biggest mistakes people make in doing genealogy research is to look narrowly at just their father, his father, his father, and so on. While it’s certainly legitimate and exciting to build that long history extending back hundreds of years, it isn’t the whole picture. Cast a wide net!
Words and favourite expressions
Modern swear words are pretty boring, but can you recall any odd expressions used in your family, that no one really knew where they came from?
What terms of endearment did your family use for babies? For grandparents? The name of a grandmother can be a great clue to a family’s origins.
In other parts of their speech there could be clues too. Maybe they said “dinner” for the mid-day meal rather than “lunch”. That particular point is a bit of a complicated clue, but it’s still a clue that works together with other clues.
Do some searches as you compile your list of words your family used. A good search term is “etymology of [word]”.
Keep an open mind
When you are trying to figure out where your family came from, each one of these suggestions could become a bigger research project of its own. It’s up to you to decide what will be interesting and useful. As you keep asking, “Who are my ancestors?”, you’re going to find many ways of trying to find that information. Keep an open mind.
In the meantime, you can have fun with the family history you do know. You can use your own memories and research to leave a legacy of understanding for the future generations. They may not be interested now, but just like you, someday they will have questions.