Sunday, June 29, 2008

The Polish Midwest

Sometimes hearing how people found stuff out is as interesting as the stuff they found out. At least when Julia M., graduate student and linguist, goes to Poland in search of the family truth instead of the legend and tells all in her Summer 2008 travel blog:

I grew up believing a legend about my Polish ancestors. The story was that my great grandparents (parents of my maternal grandmother) were both Polish orphans who met on the boat coming over to America. Only a bit of this is true. My uncle (well, my mom’s cousin) Craig La Clair’s research tells quite a different story . . .
She warns that the rest will be boring if you're not related, but when people say that (showing that they're self-aware) it's usually not true. Real bores don't know they are. I don't do any Polish research but I was fascinated by the process of even just finding the town from which her ancestors emigrated.

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