Are you interested in putting your knowledge of your family history to use to connect with your ancestors’ culture? In this post, find several ways to expand your connection with the cultures your ancestors called their own.
If you have read other articles on my website, then you know that most of the information on this site is about how to learn about your ancestors. Those of us who enjoy family history research love to learn who our ancestors were and as much as we can about their lives.
Some people might wonder what we can do with all of the information that we learn about our family. One thing that might interest you is learning how to connect with your ancestors’ culture, or cultures.
You may not have any knowledge of your ancestors’ cultures at all, perhaps due to forces beyond your family’s control. Or, you may have grown up with bits and pieces of your ancestors’ culture, but you want to further explore it using your family tree research.
I’ve written about this topic before, but what really got me thinking about writing this article is when I recently learned about how many German-American families lost their connection to their German heritage during and after World War I. The US government needed more support for American involvement in the war effort, and so anti-German propaganda was employed as a tool to boost public enthusiasm.
The propaganda was so effective that German culture was essentially erased in the United States. German immigrants and people of German descent were targets of discrimination and violence, and all things German were soon viewed in a negative light.
Two of my great-grandmothers were born to in the United States to German parents, a fact I discovered through building my family tree. Did my great-grandmothers, who would have been teenagers during World War I, deliberately downplay their connection to Germany?
Since there was very little evidence of German ancestry in my family’s culture, if there was any at all, I am left with a curiosity about what I might have learned while growing up about German culture had it not been taboo to “be German” in the US for the first few decades of the 20th century.
There are a variety of reasons that you might have lost touch with your family’s cultural heritage. If you want to learn how to potentially connect with that heritage, keep reading.
Do a cultural heritage interview
If it is possible to speak with older members of your family, a great first step to exploring your family’s cultural heritage is doing informal cultural heritage interviews. By asking questions about your family’s unique culture, you might discover that some of the traditions and customs you were raised with are connected with the culture of your ancestors.
Asking questions about cultural heritage can help you understand the origin of why your family does the things the way that they do them, and help you pass this knowledge to the younger generations in your family. In other words, this can help you preserve those traditions that have survived in your family.
Connect with cousins who live there
Through your discussions with your relatives, you might find out that people in your family are still in touch with cousins who live where your ancestors were from. If you can connect with and build a relationship with your cousins based on your shared ancestors, this is a wonderful way to start exploring the culture of that area.
Before my grandfather’s death, I learned that he still corresponded with second cousins in the Netherlands. He was even able to visit them during a trip to his grandfather’s hometown, Groningen.
I have been able to connect with many cousins living in other countries through my DNA results. Contacting my DNA matches has led to relationships with cousins in the Netherlands, Serbia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Some of these cousins are descendants of collateral lines of my family tree who immigrated to other countries, and we have all been able to help each other explore our shared ancestry.
Learn their language
Language and culture are intertwined, and so there is no better way to learn about a culture than to learn the language. Through the journey of becoming fluent in another language, you will learn about customs, traditions, art, literature, as well as the history and politics of your ancestor’s homeland.
When I was in my 20s, I was hired for a job because I am fluent in Spanish. After a few months, my boss confided to one of my co-workers that he was surprised that I did things that he associated with Spanish-speaking people (i.e. ate traditional Mexican food during my lunch break, listened to music in Spanish), even though I seemed to be just as “American” as he was.
Yikes. I guess my boss learned that it’s just not possible to get language without culture! It’s a package deal.
This is why learning the language of our ancestors is one of my top suggestions for connecting to their culture. There are tons of free resources online, and you can even get free apps (Duolingo is one example) on your phone for language learning.
Learn to cook traditional foods
Learning to cook and enjoy traditional foods from your ancestor’s culture is a wonderful and delicious way to connect with your heritage and share it with others.
We have done this in my family, since our family’s cultural heritage was lost in a few different ways. By learning to cook new foods that my ancestors must have eaten, I have been able to form a connection with these cultures and pass them down to my own children.
If you have living relatives who know some family recipes, those individuals are great resources for getting started. If not, you can follow in my footsteps and learn from the plethora of YouTube videos and recipe blogs that exist for almost any cuisine in the world.
Explore their country’s history
In order to truly understand a place, and its people and culture, you have to understand its history. By learning about the history of where your ancestors lived, you will begin to understand their culture.
You will learn the villains and heroes of the history, as well as the geography, and how the different regions of their country connect and interact with each other. This information will be invaluable in your quest to connect to the culture.
Join a cultural society
Many immigrant groups in the United States, Canada, and Australia, among other countries, have established cultural organizations designed to help its members maintain their cultural connection and spread cultural awareness.
These groups can be a good way to form new social connections in the culture that you would like to connect with. You may also find that these groups are a good source of information for language learning and news about cultural events near you.
To find an organization like this, type “Your culture + cultural organization near me” into Google and see what pops up. You might also try searching for this on Facebook.
Find cultural events near you
If you live near a decent-sized city, there may be events such as festivals that celebrate your ancestors’ culture nearby. These events often have traditional dancing and music, as well as food items that you can experience.
Facebook is a great place to learn about these events. I like to sign up to “follow” the pages of local cultural organizations so that way I can see updates about these events when they occur.
Visit their homeland
One of the best ways to really get to know a culture is to experience it yourself. By visiting your ancestor’s country in person, you will be able to use the knowledge of your family history and the area’s language and history to further explore the culture.
If you know where your ancestor lived, you might even be able to visit their hometown. The house that they lived in might still be standing.
One of my great-great grandmothers was from what is now Slovakia. I was able to discover that no one lives in her village anymore, but that it is now used for field trips for local schoolchildren to learn about the old Slovak way of life.
Find out if you are eligible for citizenship
Some people whose grandparents or parents were born in another country are eligible for citizenship or special residency rights. Less commonly, people with great-grandparents or even great-great grandparents or further back, are able to acquire citizenship based on their ancestry in that country.
While this is not a complete list by any means, some countries that might have laws that allow children, and grandchildren or great-grandchildren born in other countries to get residency or citizenship are: Ireland, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Mexico, and the Philippines. In cases where someone is recently descended from someone who left their home country, they may already be a citizen without knowing it.
If you have been studying your ancestor’s culture for a while, you could visit their embassy or consulate’s website to see if you are eligible. It might be difficult to do, so please be sure to consult an expert (which I am not!).
Conclusion
I hope that this post has helped give you some ideas about how to connect with your ancestors’ culture, and that you try some of them out!
If you have any questions about something that you read in this post, or if you have an idea that I didn’t mention, please join in the discussion below.
Thanks for stopping by today!