When I was 10 my parents planned a family trip to Ireland for my Spring Break holiday. They had been working tirelessly on genealogy research for years and had found not only our ancestors but our living cousins in County Clare. When we met them, we connected as if we had known each other all our lives. In fact, we're still in touch and they have been wonderful hosts many times.
The relative who left the biggest impact on me was a person who had long since left this earth. Her name was Katie. She was my great-great-grandmother. In 1887, at just 18 years old, she boarded a boat with her brother and sailed to America. She met my fiercely Irish boxer great-great-grandfather and they had eight children. She never set foot in Ireland again.
Nearly 120 years later I was able to stand in the home she was raised in. I looked out her window across the rolling green hills she must have run through as a child. I blew dust off an old coin purse on the shelf and imagined a young Katie taking it into town to shop. I walked from room to room, retracing steps that had not been taken in over a century by the woman who risked everything and never went home so her descendants could have better lives.
I carry her with me to this day. She is why I started TraveLineage; so I could help others experience their world being forever expanded by finding who and where they are from.
-Miranda Lynch, Founder
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