CHAPTER SIX

WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF YOUR ANCESTORS:

Is geography in our bones?

With the popularity of DNA tests helping people find out more about our ancestors’ origins, many of us are driven to travel to our ancestors’ homelands and fulfill a dream to literally walk in the footsteps of those who came before us.

This interest has spawned a boom in the heritage travel trend as we embark on life-changing journeys to the places of our family’s past.

For many of us whose family immigrated to the US, visiting our ancestral home feels so familiar, as if we are being pulled to an overseas place where we will connect with our past and find a sense of wholeness within ourselves. What makes us feel an intense sense of home when we walk through streets we’ve never walked, recognize faces we’ve never known, and experience inexplicable connections?

Returning home, we carry the place back with us, as if we’ve packed our roots in our suitcases and brought the transformative trips home in our hearts forever.

It can be a very emotional and humbling experience. We may have discovered why our ancestors left their country to begin a new life in a foreign land. We may have begun to understand deep down what we have inherited from our families’ cultures of origin.

The Accidental Tourist: Woman reunited with long-lost cousins in Sicily

When Allison Scola was backpacking through Europe after college, a tray of Sicilian pastries delivered to her in Rome unlocked an entire world.

Scola’s grandfather Vincenzo immigrated to the US from Porticello, a tiny fishing village in Sicily, in 1913. In the late 1920s, he traveled home to the largest island in the Mediterranean to marry, then returned to Brooklyn, New York, with his bride and started a family. Scola’s father was born during World War II, and although he had traveled to Italy—even living there for a year in the 1960s—he didn’t share much about his Sicilian cousins or family with his daughter.

In 1996, when she was twenty-four, Scola was inspired to visit Sicily after meeting her father’s first cousin Pietro, a pastry chef, in Rome. His cannoli—a dessert she had delighted in with her father during her entire life—were like nothing she had ever tasted in the States. Pietro convinced her to travel to Sicily.

There, the singer and songwriter met a second cousin, six months her junior. It was kismet—the duo felt an immediate organic and spiritual connection.

“I immediately thought, ‘this is where I belong,’” says Scola, who now lives in Englewood, New Jersey. “I felt so at home in Sicily. Arriving there for the first time was overwhelming.”

Since then, she has become a frequent tourist. “Every time I get off the plane, I feel so good; the energy just takes over,” she says. “I’m always astounded by the feeling of connectedness I have to the landscape and to the people. I feel like it is where I belong.”

In 2013, Scola and her Italian cousin Evelina cofounded Experience Sicily, a boutique tour company. Together they plan beyond-the-ordinary itineraries in Italy, many that serve Italian Americans conducting heritage research. The team not only collects vital records at town registry offices in Sicily, but using their deep network of local insiders, when possible, they reconnect American families with living distant relatives and plan authentic experiences so their clients truly understand the history, culture, and land from which their ancestors emigrated.

Even though she’d formed a deep connection with her dad’s mother’s side of the family, a mystery still remained about her grandfather’s family. Her father knew very little, if anything, about his living relatives.

Her journey to discover her father’s paternal roots began.

Through Experience Sicily, Scola shares her passion for her family’s ancestral homeland with other Americans seeking to connect with their Italian roots. By planning ancestral pilgrimages, she helps fellow Americans tap into the same connectedness and rootedness she feels every time her plane hits the tarmac in Italy.

In anticipation of their clients’ travels, Scola and her colleague (and husband) Joe Ravo spend hours online scouring vital records to unpack family histories. Their expertise at locating and examining timeworn documents enables them to find forgotten relatives and piece together personal lineages. “It’s so rewarding when we connect distant cousins to distant cousins,” she explains.

Her father’s longing to connect to his paternal relatives took a heightened turn in June 2019, when age began catching up to him. Scola decided to turn the tables on herself and make a concerted effort to find the family he was seeking.

While staying in Porticello, the village of her grandfather’s birth, a tip from a new tourism contact laid the bread crumbs. By recommendation, Scola introduced herself to the owner of a local restaurant who, she was told, might be a connection.

After dining at the trattoria, she introduced herself to the owner—Sebastiano Scola—who was equally fascinated to meet her. After talking for a few minutes about family history, they determined that their great-greatgrandfathers were probably brothers.

“He explained that there are only a handful of Scolas left in Porticello, and knowing the houses that my great-grandfather built, our connection was clear,” she says.

Armed with this new information, Scola set off to the office of vital records in the town of Santa Flavia. There she spent a couple of hours with a very patient director, who located the documents that supported what she had already found on Ancestry.com. “From the meeting, I was able to confirm my family’s history as founding members of the village and, importantly, glean that I come from centuries of professional fishermen and fishmongers,” Scola says.

Returning to Sebastiano’s restaurant with more details, she spent a couple of fascinating hours with Nino Scola, a distant cousin, and his wife and daughter, who Scola says has many of the same characteristics as she does. “When you see us next to each other,” she says, “it’s clear we’re related.”

In September 2019, Scola’s father returned to Sicily for a visit. Armed with specifics about his father Vincenzo’s side of the family, he met Nino Scola and Sebastiano’s father—his contemporaries. The men spent an entire afternoon discussing their life stories while gazing at the sea where their grandparents and great-grandparents had fished for tuna, anchovies, and sardines for centuries. “He has been to Sicily more than a dozen times,” Scola explains. “But this time my dad was even more emotional when he returned. Connecting with these distant cousins gave him a new perspective on his father’s legacy.”

LEGACY LESSON

Serious ancestry seekers should embark on a journey to their family’s homeland.

“To truly uncover your family history, you have to go. Do some research before you leave. Create a family tree using the tools available on the internet. Collect information from your oldest living relatives—record even the most convoluted stories. You’ll see these will reveal truths. Then, make the time to go and talk to people in the town. Arrange to have an English-speaking guide or local insider with you. Have patience. These tiny villages have few staff members and limited office hours, so plan accordingly. Stay in the village or town and spend some time. That’s how you discover your personal history, and when you do, it will change your whole perspective on your life.”

Time Traveling: “I found a part of myself I didn’t know was missing.”

Kalev Rudolph, twenty-four, grew up in southeastern Philadelphia, but from an early age, their parents inspired them to explore different cultures, especially Estonia, from which their family emigrated more than four thousand miles to America. Their household dinner table talks were flush with stories of the family’s history, adventures, and tribulations during World War II and their grandparents’ love story.

The need to know more about the specifics of who their grandparents and ancestors before them were, where they lived, or what they did is insatiable for Rudolph, who now lives in Indonesia and makes their living as a travel blogger, foodie, and writer.

DNA testing gave them the tools to take their exploration to an even deeper level, Rudolph says.

“Learning about your family history is transformative,” says Rudolph. “When pieces of the historical puzzle that have led to you come together—something changes. As a second-generation Estonian American, I have been lucky enough to know pieces of my grandfather’s coming-to-America story but never thought I’d have to do much searching for answers.”

Rudolph’s yearning to explore that rich history started shortly after their eighteenth birthday, when their grandparents took them to Estonia.

“I learned things I would never have thought to ask,” says Rudolph.

“Finding out how super-Estonian my grandfather was was shocking,” says Rudolph. “While he has some crosses from other countries, he is a massive majority of Estonian blood going back for generations.”

Fortunately for Rudolph and their cousins, their grandparents were determined to take their heirs on these exhilarating journeys back in time to soak in their family heritage.

After the USSR fell and Estonia’s borders opened again to US citizens in 1991, their grandparents returned to their homeland as many times as they could. They had originally left in 1944. It became something of a family tradition to take whichever grandchild had just turned eighteen to Estonia in the summer to get a tour of the family history.

“All the while, letting slip family stories and bickering over maps—we were often lost for hours. After our first two weeks of meeting cousins and enjoying the nearly twenty-four hours of Baltic summer sunshine, we made our plans to visit the land where my grandfather’s (Vanaisa, as we called him) childhood farm was, as well as the grave of my great-grandfather.”

It’s a tiny town on the northern side of the country, speckled with crumbling medieval castles, simple farmhouses, rolled bales of hay (often with herons perched on top), and the brutal vestiges of Soviet occupation.

For Rudolph, the journey was magical.

“The plot where their farm was had become a glowingly green field, just waves and waves of sunlight rippling across the tall grass,” says Rudolph. “All my life, I had understood this place as a symbol and a story—but not somewhere real.”

The experience was overwhelming and heartwarming all at once.

“Standing there, next to my grandfather—looking at the actual earth where he played and laughed and would eventually hide in the woods for weeks avoiding the Soviet soldiers, eating grubs and plants for days—felt indescribable,” says Rudolph. “It was beautiful and quiet, and full.”

Rudolph got to envision the stories they had always been told and describes it here:

“For his sixteenth birthday, my grandfather was supposed to get biplane lessons,” he says. “As a well-to-do family, they had a housekeeper, outdoor ‘fridge,’ house, and plenty of land. When news of the Soviet invasion came, they buried what silver and valuables they could under the barn, took a fully loaded pistol and a few prized possessions, and fled.

“The pistol was to be used by my great-grandfather if the soldiers came too close, first killing my grandfather, then his mother, and then himself. This moment never came. But there were close calls. They spent weeks in the forests around their home, foraging what they could and hiding day and night.

“When my grandfather’s birthday came around, their housekeeper, who was kept on by the now occupying Soviets, snuck a pancake out to their family. It was his only gift.

“Working slowly toward the coastline, they moved during quiet hours, doing what they could to stay unnoticed. After weeks, they made it to the intended meeting point, a small dock on the western shore of the country, where a boat was waiting to take them across the Baltic Sea to the small island of Saaremaa. Once there, they organized transit into Germany, where they’d stay for the next two years dodging the draft and trying to find transport to the US.

“On my trip to Estonia, more than fifty years later, we spent a long day trying to find this dock. My grandparents mutually decided to skip this visit, so it was just my mom, stepdad, and me. We drove through town after town, using the churches as guideposts, stopping along the way to ask strangers directions.

“We’d been given handwritten directions, based on my grandfather’s best memory, along with some town names to get us going the right way. Finally, we found a pastor who was able to point us down a road unlisted on our phone maps. I remember how long it was, driving incredibly slowly in our rented Peugeot over rough gravel and skull-size rocks.

“The trees were tall and thin and bleached white. Wind rustled the birch leaves, and we all made jokes about driving to our deaths. And we held silence in the comfort of our air-conditioned car, looking down the same road my grandfather and great-grandparents traveled fearing for their lives.

“At the end of the winding drive, we came upon the collection of old buildings, which were eerily empty, one smokestack chugging along. No one came out to bother us or ask why we had come, so we found a place to park. My mom got out, having been once before, and led us to the small concrete dock leading straight into that cold northern sea.

“It’s a small bay. On that summer afternoon, with waves lapping at the moss-covered posts, it couldn’t have been more tranquil. We stood and stared into the water. I couldn’t help but imagine the small pontoon boat, the tension that must have hung in the air. I wondered what they whispered to each other.

“My mom told me they made it there just before dawn. They rode away from the eastern sunrise, into dark morning waters and away from home.”

The trip opened a door to a whole new sense of self, says Rudolph.

“Instantly, I found some part of myself I didn’t know I was missing,” says Rudolph. “It was something I maybe knew existed but had never known. And not only a part of myself, but part of the man who raised my mother. These were pieces of the trauma and perseverance that define my family.”

Rudolph adds, “Gaining this knowledge gave me the tools to better connect to myself and my history. It helps me make peace with and find a fuller appreciation of the life I have.

“Traveling to learn about my ancestor’s homeland has inspired me to want to see as much of the world as I can,” says Rudolph.

LEGACY LESSON

“While I don’t necessarily think of my work as finding a voice for my family (they have been speaking for themselves for generations), advocating for my community and other groups around the world is central to everything I do—tenets I feel are deeply connected to my history and ancestors,” says Rudolph.

Getting Back to his Roots: “I felt like I came home.”

In 2002, Anthony Bianco found himself standing in Friuli Venezia Giulia, a northeast Italian region bordering Austria, Slovenia, and the Adriatic Sea, where his father grew up.

“I felt like I came home,” says Bianco, forty-six, a father of two daughters from Brisbane, Australia, and author of the blog The Travel Tart—Offbeat Tales From a Travel Addict.

Bianco, whose parents both emigrated to Australia as children in the early 1950s following World War II, was backpacking around the world and had decided to see where his parents came from—his father’s side in Friuli, and his mother’s from Sicily. His parents met as adults in Australia.

“My grandparents left all of their family behind back then—and on my mother’s side, they never set foot in the country again,” says Bianco. “But I was able to meet some of their brothers and sisters (such as my great-uncle, who was a cobbler in Sicily well into his late eighties!) on a trip before my grandmother passed away, so I was able to make connections from her stories to the physical landmarks and real people.” For the first time, Bianco says, he could emotionally place himself in his grandparents’ lives by meeting his relatives.

It began an almost twenty-year pursuit to learn more about his roots.

“I wanted to explore what it must have been like to move halfway around the world to a place that you don’t know at all and sometimes just had heard of,” says Bianco. “My family’s story is about how they decided to make the move because they wanted something better. It was a totally different era that most of us today would find totally alien, but this is where I came from—very humble origins.”

He also feels compelled to trace the history to pass it on for generations to come. “I think it’s important that my daughters know the background to their heritage,” he says.

His mother, Maria, chronicled her experience leaving Sicily and starting a new life in Australia in a book called Three Trunks and a Cardboard Case (named appropriately for all the worldly belongings the family was able to take with them).

In the book, his mother describes how her father, Bianco’s grandfather Salvatore, leaves his native Sicily forever for Australia by himself, never to return. One year later, his wife, Nunzia, and children, Vito and herself, leave Sicily as well, and they embrace a new life in the isolated and humid sugarcane fields of far north Queensland, hoping for a better life.

Raised in Australia, a home of tranquility and tropical beauty, Bianco feels compelled to continue the next chapter for his mother and to find out more about where both his mother and father came from, in order to connect with something that is exclusively his family’s and personally enriching for himself.

“My family on both sides were typical of what happened to many families in post–World War II Italy,” says Bianco. “They pretty much had enough of all of the mess of a European war, so they decided to have a go by emigrating to a country halfway around the world that they didn’t know much about, [where they] didn’t know how to speak the language and didn’t know what the culture was. And then, their new lives involved cutting sugarcane by hand for a long time for not very much money.”

Through his ancestry research, he learned many details about life for his family. He describes his astonishment at their courage: “My grandparents left all of their family behind back then—and never set foot in the country again,” he says. “After thinking about it, that’s a big deal—packing up everything from what you know, permanently—for the chance of a better life. Being transplanted from one culture to another, without the aid of being able to do any research or google stuff, would have been a major culture shock. And while I really like Italy, I’m glad I live in Australia.”

“They saw their lives as too bleak,” he says.

But there were some quirky tales, too.

“When my grandfather arrived in Australia, he was issued meal vouchers on a train trip,” says Bianco. “When he handed in his voucher for a breakfast, he had no idea what Corn Flakes were because he had never eaten them before. He thought they looked like patatine (Italian for potato chips.) So instead of pouring the milk in with the Corn Flakes, he crunched his way through a dry bowl of cornflakes—which didn’t taste like chips—and then promptly drank the milk separately.”

Like many Australians, Bianco found his background multifaceted, existing at the intersection of Australia and Italy. To him, exploration of his grandparents’ and parents’ emigration journey is a step toward self-discovery. He wants to understand how their trip impacted the trajectory of all their lives.”

I had always been curious about why someone would want to leave the country of their birth, never to see it again, to venture to another place that was completely foreign and where they didn’t know the language. I do know that Italy was a ‘basket case’ after World War II, and both sides of my family didn’t see a future there for their children. This is a common theme of the Italian diaspora around the world. They felt it was easier to leave than stay,” he says. “I found things make a lot of sense when you see the place where your family history happened. Going back to the country of your heritage to discover your roots is a pretty common occurrence for Australians.”

He adds, “I think the best way to understand a history lesson is to go to the place where an event happened and see it with your own eyes,” he says. “It was good to meet my relatives, and I felt like a bit of a novelty because they were interested in what it was like to grow up on the other side of the world, considering that many of them had never ventured far beyond the village.”

Bianco says he’s thrilled to hand down to his children a glimpse at what the family is and who they were. He’s happy to have played a role in affirming the lives of those who came before.

“It was totally worth it because it gives you an idea of how chance decisions can affect everyone’s lives,” says Bianco. “I mean, if all of my grandparents hadn’t taken a risk to leave, I wouldn’t have existed!”

LEGACY LESSON

“For anyone considering undertaking genealogy travel or finding out more about your ancestors, just do it. Research your ancestry then travel there. You will learn a lot more about the country of your heritage. You’ll find out a lot about yourself and others—and that people around the world have the same needs and wants.”

Destination DNA: How genealogy-focused tourism is driving heritage travel

Stories of our ancestors and the faraway lands they traveled from used to exist solely in our imaginations and in the kitchen-table wisdom of our grandparents and parents.

But, now, thanks to the internet, these tales are no longer family lore. We can sit in the comfort of our family rooms and research our roots, the research inspiring us to visit the places where our ancestors once lived.

Armed with our DNA test results and knowledge of where we come from, tourists are picking their travel destinations, driving a heritage travel trend globally. Ancestry travel made Lonely Planet’s list of top travel trends in 2019.20

Ancestry travel companies are popping up worldwide. These boutique companies, as well as the major players—Ancestry.com, 23andMe.com, MyHeritage.com, AfricanAncestry.com, and more—offer group and individual tours with custom itineraries so ancestry seekers can visit a town, research archives, visit churches, see a family home, or meet with relatives from their DNA test matches.

Airbnb recently teamed up with 23andMe to offer heritage travel where, after receiving DNA results, customers can book lodging in their ancestral homelands through Airbnb. In 2017, Ancestry.com partnered with Go Ahead Tours to promote the DNA test and travel packages.

There’s a whopping market out there. According to a press release from Airbnb and 23andMe, “Since 2014, the number of travelers using Airbnb for tracing their roots increased by 500 percent, and 78 percent of these trips are taken in pairs or solo, suggesting that these are introspective journeys or an important moment to share with a significant other.”²¹

Identity-Inspired Wanderlust: Longing to walk the land of ancestors propels genealogy tourism boom

Most years, the months from St. Patrick’s Day in March through October bring a slew of cruise ships docking in the Dublin port and coach buses pulling up along the banks of the River Liffey, unloading thousands of tourists. Armed with folders and digital family trees, they descend on the Irish Family History Centre at EPIC (the Irish Emigration Museum). They are on a mission: to dig deeper into their roots and set foot on the ground where their Irish family lived.

“Two of the most common things we are asked are to find the site of the old family house or homestead and to find living relatives—the descendants of those that stayed behind,” says Fiona Fitzsimons, who heads the team of genealogists at the Centre. “We have a highly interactive experience here because many people want to do their own research. My friend’s husband expressed it best when he said, ‘I wouldn’t pay someone to play a round of golf for me.’ So, people come to the Centre to do their own research. We also have a staff of genealogists at the ready to help when they hit a brick wall in their research.”

In the last 10 years, genealogy has opened up as a hobby, as more records are available online. Fiona’s husband, Brian Donovan, is the man responsible for putting a lot of Irish family history online. “Brian is responsible for digitizing/ publishing over 150 million Irish records—he’s made a bigger contribution than anyone to opening up research to all.”

“Online publication has had a huge impact on access, especially for people of Irish ancestry living overseas,” she says. “Better access to a wider set of records means it’s possible to trace almost every Irish family back to the 1830s, or earlier. Once they’ve done their research and built their family tree, they want to come face-to-face with their personal heritage.”

“There’s certainly a huge increase in ancestry travel,” she says. There are many theories about what is driving the surge, and Fitzsimons thinks one is personal identity: “To have a deeper sense of who they are and where they come from. [...] This includes the adult children of first-generation immigrants, but also the descendants of colonial settlers. One of the things that most surprises me is that overseas, the sense of Irish ethnicity endures. It’s passed on for generations, whereas many other ethnicities are lost in the melting pot.”

Fitzsimons and the Irish Family History Centre frequently work with travel agents, tour operators, and Tourism Ireland to do the background research for Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders—any people with Irish origins who want to plan genealogy trips to Ireland. The Irish Family History Centre has arranged genealogy trips for hundreds of travelers, including former US president Barack Obama, and his vice-president Joe Biden.

President Obama, whose ancestors emigrated to the United States in the 1850s, found the family homestead with the help of Fitzsimons. In May of 2011, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama visited his ancestral home in Moneygall, Co. Offaly. Fitzsimons coached the present-day owner on how to guide them through the house.

“[Former President Obama is] a lawyer and a career politician—stoic and focused,” says Fitzsimons. “But once he was inside [the house], the penny suddenly dropped. He looked around and asked what part of the house, if any, was in the same layout as when his ancestors lived there (between 1800 and 1850). We expected this question based on prior experience, and I’d coached the property owner on how to answer it. The two rooms to the front were all that remained of the original house.

“Standing within those four walls, he was suddenly confronted by his Irish origins. So, you know, even a president isn’t immune to the genealogy bug.”

In 2016, former Vice President Biden came to Ireland with his family. Fitzsimons was asked to research the family’s Irish ancestral roots in advance. Her research on Biden’s family of county Louth and county Mayo was used to plan the Vice President’s travel itinerary in Ireland.

“I think the 2016 trip was especially emotional for the Vice President and his family,” says Fitzsimons, who accompanied them around Ireland for five days as their genealogy guide.

“In 2010, the Vice President’s mother passed away. She had always been very proud of her Irish heritage. Then, in 2015, before he could make the trip with his family, Beau Biden, the Vice President’s son, fell ill and died.”

“When Joe Biden came to Ireland in 2016, I believe his visit was in part a leave-taking (farewell tribute) of his mother, and also of his son. On day five, we reached the Cooley Peninsula in county Louth and stopped where the family house once stood. Close by were the ruins of an old church and graveyard. The Biden family walked alone there and took some silent time to themselves,” she says.

“When they were faced with their Irishness, both [Obama and Biden] had different responses, but very visceral all the same,” she says. “President Obama joked a lot during his visit. But, standing under his ancestral roof in Moneygall, he was brought to silence.”

She adds: “For Vice President Biden, his Irish heritage was part of the fabric of family life. [I believe that] he drew on his sense of Irishness for strength and solace in his personal loss.”

Beyond the tours, Fitzsimons can be found in the Irish Family History Centre. She leads the team of genealogists who can provide online and in-person consultation for “brick wall inquiries.” The team also takes research commissions for Irish and British (England, Scotland, and Wales) ancestry.

“Research online is the entry point for anyone tracing their roots. Some of the best evidence is buried in archival records, land deeds, wills, estate records, and more,” she says.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in spring of 2020, the Centre launched weekly live Q&As on Facebook. The live sessions proved very popular and became a regular feature.

Fitzsimons also teaches a course over two years in Irish Family and Social History at Trinity College, Dublin.