Growing up, I felt envious of people who knew who their great-grandparents were and were able to spend time with them. Some of my great-grandparents passed before I was born, some lived in a different country and some were no longer in contact with our family. I was always curious about my relatives and wanted to know more.
My interest really piqued after my grandfather passed away in 2021. I had never known who any of his family was and was curious about his life. When he was young, he left home to join the Navy and lost contact with his family.
This also led me to look into my grandmother’s childhood. She immigrated from Palermo, Sicily to Chicago when she was a teenager after both her parents passed away. I didn’t know much about her childhood or family and was curious about how her life looked like in her home country.
While on social media one day, I saw a video talking about an app called Family Search. It is created by the Church of Ladder Day Saints (as genealogy is a big part of their religion) and compiles a ton of ancestry sites to compose a family tree. I was quickly able to connect relatives to myself and get a brief sense of their life looking at the sources the app provided. Although the information was basic at first, like their names and birth years, I was interested to learn more and kept going.
Eventually I discovered family members tracing back to as early as the 15th and 16th century. It felt surreal to see ancestors that were alive so long ago and lived through many different things than I did but were somehow related to me.
Another thing I found interesting was how easy it was to find relatives in other countries. Tracing people back in the states proved to be fairly difficult, but I easily found records kept by the Catholic church. The church kept very detailed and consistent records of baptisms, marriages and even burials. With those records I was able to trace my ancestry far back, especially in places like Italy and Ireland.
Looking at my family tree, I’ve learned a lot about myself that I had never known before. Besides what I already knew, I found I had ancestors in Russia, Germany, France and even Canada. Seeing all of these different countries really illustrated how different cultures and backgrounds have quietly shaped my family to who we are today.
Uncovering these records changed the way I view myself and my family. Ancestors I had only heard tiny bits of information about felt more real to me and my family. Uncovering my genealogy not only connected me to the generations before me, but gave me a clearer picture of how myself and my family came to be.
Discovering my family’s past really helped me feel more rooted in who I am. While I’m still curious about some aspects of my family members’ lives, I’m grateful in knowing that I’ve been able to find tons of ancestors who would’ve been forgotten as time passes.
