Who Is the Most Traveled Person In Your Family?

I admit my inner child is still that kid who asks on car rides “Are we there yet?” Even on my recent genealogy road trip the distances seemed SOOOOOO FAR. I often thought about the Pryor wives I researched who traveled long distances by foot and in wagons over bumpy roads. Through multiple moves some traveled a thousand miles or more from their Eastern homes.

It was during these musings I realized I am probably the most travelled woman on both sides of my family tree. I’ve crossed oceans on modern jets probably twenty times. I’ve crossed the U.S. by train and plane a few more times. I backpacked around Europe and Africa which added some serious territory to my claim to this title.

Offering the title “Most Travelled” is a way start writing about an ancestor or to give depth to an ancestor’s story. Where do you find these details? You may have travel details in an ancestor’s papers, such as

• Postcards – In past decades hotels and motels provided guests with postcards depicting the location. These were great pieces of advertising but they seem to have disappeared as a complementary item in hotel rooms. I know I picked up these cards and have a stack of unused hotel postcards from years of travel. They are a bit hard to date without a postmark, but they can show where someone had visited.
• Diaries and Personal Accounts – My mother left a personal account of her migration to California and my father kept a travel diary that listed sites and events during a trip to Washington, D.C.
• Expense Ledgers and Receipts – Our kin who were adults long before the digital age often kept shoeboxes of receipts and handwritten ledgers. My dad kept little books where he recorded mileage and listed locations where he purchased gasoline. I can’t imagine doing this but it offered some interesting insight into travel.
• Photo Albums – Photos of family vacations are perhaps the best source to document family travels. I’ve been working on a Philadelphia family (not my own) who left a photo album of their travels. The album contains photographs of trips to post-World War II Europe in the 1940s, a 1950s trip to Israel, and professional photographs taken aboard the first Queen Elizabeth. What did they chose to photograph can also tell you something about your ancestor’s interests. Their personal photographs is like seeing the world through their eyes… or their camera.

Who is the most travelled person in your family tree?