On the Road with Reid 'Round Ireland: Digging for Your Irish Roots (cont'd)

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The Payoff
Of course, the real fun in the treasure hunt that winds down those snaking roots of your family tree comes when you get to the region whence your ancestors hailed and start tracing the more delicate tendrils of your family history. Whether this be pouring over history tomes and civil records in the local library to verify birth and death dates or making a pilgrimage to the graveyard where the headstones of your great-great-grandparents lie, this is the payoff.

Tracing your family tree can be worth it, and it's far more than an exercise in genealogy. You may even be bold enough to track down local folks of the same last name—hopefully, with the help of documentation that shows a direct link—and introduce yourself to some long-lost cousins.

Remember that Polish great-grandmother of mine? Last year, just before making a business trip to Poland, my parents managed to track down Apollonia's younger twin brothers, who are in their 90s and still alive and well in the Old Country. One is a priest, the other a painter, and the latter's daughter and her family insisted that my parents drop by Krakow during their Poland trip. I was going to Europe at the same time for work anyway, so I joined them for what turned into three days of familial camaraderie, delicious food, more vodka than one should take in a lifetime, and incredible tales of the family past.

We listened to the priest's jokes (translated into French for us by his niece) and his stories about the rollicking good times he had back in seminary with one of his buddies—who would go on to become Pope John Paul II. We visited the painter's studio to see his art and watch the experimental films he made in the 50s. We got a tour of the city from his 18-year-old granddaughter, who was tickled pink to discover that, in Polish terms, she was considered my aunt. And we learned an incredible amount about what life was like in Poland before the Nazis, under the Communists, and after the Iron Curtain was lifted.

I know none of that has had to do with Ireland or tracing one's Gaelic genealogy, but I'm afraid it's the closest I can get. Not everyone is lucky enough to make it to these final steps in tracing their ancestry, and so far as my Irish roots go, I haven't been.

The sad truth is that immigrants from any country often have a habit of turning their backs on the Old World and the old ways. Many avoid speaking of their homelands or their personal history to offspring in the hopes that their children will grow up 100 percent American and not face the same trials and troubles they did as foreigners in our land. And many times, the kids, grandkids, and later generations are slow to realize their own interest in the family's far-flung past, and often wait until it is too late.

I learned what I could of my Reid/Burke past from my mom, who had in turn already learned what she could some years ago. Her father Matthew Reid, that US-born Scots-Irish grandfather of mine, passed away just a few months ago. While his younger sister Eileen was only too glad to chat with me when I phoned from Ireland a few days back, curious to peg down some of my ancestors more firmly, she knew only of a few place names she'd heard her mother mention decades ago, and had never even been sure from which town Katherine Burke had hailed (Roscommon is only our best guess).

Take my advice: take the time to do the research before you go, and by all means please talk to as many relatives as you can. The secrets of their pasts will not always be just a phone call away. And besides, it's good to keep in touch.

Copyright (c) 2003 by Newsweek Budget Travel, Inc.