Yes You! Yes Now! Visiting Your Ancestral Town

By Carolyn Schott

Yes You! Yes Now!® books are created especially for you – the action-oriented person who wants to try something new and wants to find out about it now.
In no time you will have all you need to know to decide to give it a try including:
•Why do this?
•What it will be like
•First steps
•What you need
•When things go right
•When things go wrong
•What’s next?
Quick, easy, and fun. No long books to wade through. No long tedious hours surfing the Internet. The spring-board to action. Yes You! Yes Now!

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Visiting Your Ancestral Town was written by Carolyn Schott, a travel expert who started her adventures just like you: not knowing where to start or what to do. Learn from her experiences and enjoy the entertaining stories that will either inspire you to try it yourself or wisely inform you to take some other path. Either way, you’ll enjoy the journey!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Columbia-Capstone
• Release date: May 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476172323

Carolyn Schott

Book: •Yes You! Yes Now! Visiting Your Ancestral Town Published by Columbia-Capstone, 2010 Average 5-star rating on Amazon Reviewed by German Life magazine and Bella Online More stories of visits to ancestral towns on my blog Travel essays: •My travel blog •How Silently the Christmas Spirit Came (Christian Science Monitor, December 2007) •Cross-cultural Thanksgiving with Turkey in Greece (Seattle Times, November 2003) Profiles: •Author says secular work ‘matters’ to God (UPC Times September/October 2009) •Worship leaders bring pastoral hearts to their roles (UPC Times September/October 2009) •UPC’s Deaf Ministry: The Word comes alive for those with separate linguistic identity (UPC Times March/April 2009) •Survey shows consistency in member focus (UPC Times September/October 2008) •Kiev musicians, UPCers form connections (UPC Times July/August 2008) •Ex-Cold War officer finds meaning in warm relationships in Ukraine, Russia (UPC Times November/December 2007) •Mission task forces use small grants for big results (UPC Times July/August 2007) (UPC Times July/August 2007) Genealogy and family history: •Genealogy Research: The Basics (Heritage Review, December 2008) •The Lehr Tabernacle (Heritage Review, March 2007) Other Blogs: •Martha – A Weak Distracted Faith? Or a Strong Bold Faith? (Chrysalis, April 2007)

Book preview

YES YOU!

YES NOW!®

Visiting Your

Ancestral Town

Connecting With Your Family History

By Carolyn Schott

Published by Columbia-Capstone

Copyright 2010 Carolyn Schott

Smashwords Edition

Yes You! Yes Now!, with or without punctuation, is a registered trademark of Columbia-Capstone

Published by Columbia-Capstone, Sammamish, Washington

www.columbia-capstone.com

Cover design by Brion Sausser, www.bookcreatives.com

With appropriate citation, permission is granted to reproduce brief sections for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research as permitted in Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976. Requests for full chapter copies, commercial use, and all other uses should be directed to the publisher at [e-mail].

ISBN-13: 978-0-9821148-2-7

ISBN-10: 0-9821148-2-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929382

Library of Congress subject headings

Travel

Family history

Genealogy

Travel Guidebooks

Ancestry

Cover photo: The town square in Butzbach, Germany. Photo courtesy of Carolyn Schott

Visiting Your Ancestral Town was written by Carolyn Schott, a travel expert who started her adventures just like you: not knowing where to start or what to do. Learn from her experiences and enjoy the entertaining stories that will either inspire you to try it yourself or wisely inform you to take some other path. Either way, you’ll enjoy the journey!

To my parents, Harry and Evelyn Schott, who instilled in me the importance of family and the love of travel that inspired this book. Also my genealogy mentor, Dale Lee Wahl, who invited me on my first trip to visit ancestral towns.

Contents

Chapter 1 Why Do This?

Chapter 2 What It Will Be Like

Chapter 3 First Steps

Chapter 4 What You Need

Chapter 5 When Things Go Right

Chapter 6 When Things Go Wrong

Chapter 7 What's Next?

Chapter 8 Tools

Chapter 1

Why Do This?

Visiting with the Kram family of Kassel (Velikokomarivka), Ukraine

Why Visit an Ancestral Town?

You may have grown up listening to your parents’ or grand-parents’ stories of their childhoods. You may have an interest in history and want to get a glimpse of a place where your family once lived. You may be a genealogist wanting to see for yourself the towns that are currently just names on your family tree. Or you may want the opportunity to do genealogy research in a local archive, library, or historical society to see records you don’t have access to at home.

Each of us has our own set of reasons to visit an ancestral town. And your own unique set of expectations for your trip will be key to deciding where to go and how to prepare.

Family memoirs and stories

Haven’t we all had our parents tell us a story like, Don’t complain about walking to school, young lady. When I was your age, I’d milked the cows and fed the chickens and then still had to walk four miles to school.

But even when we roll our eyes, the stories told by our parents and grandparents give us intriguing glimpses into the world they grew up in that is so different from our world of the Internet and smartphones and Facebook. My parents’ stories always made me want to see the places that they talked about.

My mother grew up in a town called Lehr in North Dakota in the 1920s and 30s. Many of the memories of her youth grew fuzzier for her over time, but never the stories of the annual camp meetings her church held at the nearby Lehr Tabernacle. Even in her 80s, her face would light up as she re-experienced the delight she and her friends had searching the straw floor for coins which had dropped from people’s pockets. And then her stories would shift into her young adulthood, when she and her friends would walk into the prairie hills beyond the tabernacle, playing guitars and singing gospel songs, laughing, and of course, flirting with the young men.

Although I heard the stories of the camp meetings all my life and we visited my grandparents in Lehr throughout my childhood, I never saw the tabernacle until I was an adult and took my