Genealogy Tourism

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I read an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the Cana­di­an Press enti­tled “ ‘Geneal­o­gy tourists’ hit Salt Lake City library in search of fam­i­ly tree”.

It’s an inter­est­ing piece, espe­cial­ly the sec­tion about Car­la San­tos, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of tourism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign, who makes the point that every des­ti­na­tion is a geneal­o­gy des­ti­na­tion because “every­one has a fam­i­ly sto­ry that con­nects them to some­where.”

This is def­i­nite­ly true of my fam­i­ly. Yes, we occa­sion­al­ly get to “tourist loca­tions”, like Maui, and love them, but we’re cur­rent­ly plan­ning to go to Mon­roe Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia and Madi­son Coun­ty, Illi­nois. These are not exact­ly as pop­u­lar as the Ital­ian Riv­iera … just in case you were won­der­ing … but they mean some­thing to us because of what we may dis­cov­er in the court hous­es and ceme­ter­ies there.