Nina,

quote:

I always have a conehead moment when reading various documents and seeing an ancestor listed as "from France."

what does "conehead moment" mean??

I may be showing my age... I'm remembering the very early SNL skit with the coneheads, who used to always say they were "from France" when asked.

OMG, I remember that skit now!!!

I was just thinking conehead = idiot, and couldn't figure out what was "stupid" about being from France!

Mmmeps! Mmmeps!

I do not have much interest to map out my ancestry, never have. I rarely think about it. Though I am curious, for those who have this interest, what drives you to trace out your ancestors? Is there a life milestone or experience that flips a switch inside you and made you want to trace your ancestry?

Ax, your question isn't really directed at me, because I am not motivated to the degree that I'm willing to spend time researching (yet!).

But, since my father passed away, I'm more aware that there are things I should have asked him about, and no longer can. This goes beyond questions about our relatives of course, but there are things I'd like to know about my grandparents that he would have known, and things he might have known that I don't know to ask. Like what did our family do in Italy? Why did our family decide to come to the US when they did? What did they do make it possible?

I suppose one reason I'm not keen to start doing a lot of research is because I suspect that a lot of things I would want to know can't actually be uncovered through ancestor research....

It's a good question. For me, it's been a personal way to map American and European history. Some of my relatives came to America following religious persecution in France. My grandmother's family were homesteaders and owned a ranch on the western slope of Colorado until I was in my 20s. My dad's side of the family was a mystery, and I wanted to dig into it. If I'm honest, it was basic curiosity as much as anything else.

I've always been somewhat in awe of all our relatives making the decision, at any time, to pick up and move permanently to the US (or anywhere). It's interesting to know (or surmise) what prompted such a bold move.

quote:

I've always been somewhat in awe of all our relatives making the decision, at any time, to pick up and move permanently to the US (or anywhere).

This. I often think about my paternal grandparents and how they, first of all, came by sea and left their homes, knowing they couldn't easily go back if things didn't work out. And this in a time when there's no internet, email, texting, Skyping with those left behind, and even an international telephone call was a huge endeavor (if those left behind even had access to a telephone, which they may not have).

My sister-in-law has been working on this. After my mother died, my SIL took all of the records that my mother had to add to the mix.

All I know off the top of my head is that my maternal grandmother came from the Mogilov region when she was 6 in 1904 or when she was 4 in 1906. My grandfather similar. We had some photographs of some of the previous generation from Ekaterinaslav. Based on this, it is remotely possible that my grandfather may have bumped into Sergey Prokofiev. In most cases, whatever records there were got destroyed after all of the Jews left the shtetl.

On my father's side, his mother claimed to be from Bavaria, but she spoke Polish. I know zippo about his father other than much of the family lived in Little Rock and Baton Rouge. My father grew up in the Chicago area.

Our last name is French. Maybe we're part Conehead.