Journey to the Past
Remember that song from Anastasia, the animated, not-at-all-historically-accurate 1997 film detailing "Anya's" (aka Anastasia Romanov's) journey to rediscover — and remember — her royal roots?
Whether it was because Anya was a tomboy (my heart!), sassy (yep!), Russian (I'm 1/12!), fell in love with dreamboat Dimitri (90s John Cusack <3), or was a secretly a Princess (hey, you never know!), I felt a connection with Anastasia, and watching this movie as a 9 year old kid was one of the earliest times I remember becoming interested in family history.
Since then, I've asked my family a lot of questions, but everything I've learned only goes back a few generations...as is the case, I imagine, for most Americans. Despite being a nation of immigrants, very few Americans really know where they came from — let alone know the stories of the actual people who set the whole damn thing in motion.
For most Americans, this Journey to the Past is a winding road of discovery that (hopefully) helps them feel connected to the larger human narrative. Sometimes this road is fascinating and enlightening, other times it unearths secrets that our ancestors wish would have been forgotten. And other times, this road may be extremely painful, particularly for indigenous people and folks with African heritage, whose family histories underwent cultural (and actual) genocides — and who may have little (if any) documents that their ancestors even existed.
So whether your family came over on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or more recently, on a plane or by foot, your ancestors' stories matter.
This is why I'm starting this blog. Nerdy History major that I am, I find it very easy to get absorbed in the past. But my goal with this blog is to do more than just learn my roots. It's also to share stories with my family and anyone else that may be interested, because these stories fit into the larger American experience, and they can help us learn more about what life was like for normal, everyday people whose experiences are usually left out of history books.
Most of these posts will be telling my ancestors' stories, but I'll also be writing about my experience navigating genealogy sites and historical records. I'm by no means an expert (did you know there are such things as professional genealogists?! That's it, I'm going to quit my day job and become a full-time genealogical sleuth!), but hopefully some of my trials and tribulations on the research front may be useful for others.
With that, let's begin this Journey to the Past. I can't imagine I'll find any bombshells equal in scope to Anya discovering she's a Romanav (though apparently I have a cousin on my dad's side who's done some work that ties us to some sort of Baltic royalty...kind of like how everyone is a little Irish, isn't everyone a little royal?), I'm excited to dig in.
Whether it was because Anya was a tomboy (my heart!), sassy (yep!), Russian (I'm 1/12!), fell in love with dreamboat Dimitri (90s John Cusack <3), or was a secretly a Princess (hey, you never know!), I felt a connection with Anastasia, and watching this movie as a 9 year old kid was one of the earliest times I remember becoming interested in family history.
Since then, I've asked my family a lot of questions, but everything I've learned only goes back a few generations...as is the case, I imagine, for most Americans. Despite being a nation of immigrants, very few Americans really know where they came from — let alone know the stories of the actual people who set the whole damn thing in motion.
For most Americans, this Journey to the Past is a winding road of discovery that (hopefully) helps them feel connected to the larger human narrative. Sometimes this road is fascinating and enlightening, other times it unearths secrets that our ancestors wish would have been forgotten. And other times, this road may be extremely painful, particularly for indigenous people and folks with African heritage, whose family histories underwent cultural (and actual) genocides — and who may have little (if any) documents that their ancestors even existed.
So whether your family came over on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or more recently, on a plane or by foot, your ancestors' stories matter.
This is why I'm starting this blog. Nerdy History major that I am, I find it very easy to get absorbed in the past. But my goal with this blog is to do more than just learn my roots. It's also to share stories with my family and anyone else that may be interested, because these stories fit into the larger American experience, and they can help us learn more about what life was like for normal, everyday people whose experiences are usually left out of history books.
Most of these posts will be telling my ancestors' stories, but I'll also be writing about my experience navigating genealogy sites and historical records. I'm by no means an expert (did you know there are such things as professional genealogists?! That's it, I'm going to quit my day job and become a full-time genealogical sleuth!), but hopefully some of my trials and tribulations on the research front may be useful for others.
With that, let's begin this Journey to the Past. I can't imagine I'll find any bombshells equal in scope to Anya discovering she's a Romanav (though apparently I have a cousin on my dad's side who's done some work that ties us to some sort of Baltic royalty...kind of like how everyone is a little Irish, isn't everyone a little royal?), I'm excited to dig in.
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