Rock-tober 26, 2017

Andrea and I visited the Smithsonian Institute of American History this past summer. While there we saw an interactive display that was intended to show the dispersion of your ancestry. You were first prompted for your place of birth, then your parents' places of birth, and then their parents' places of birth. When you finished entering the data, all these locations would light up on a large map.  Each generation was color coded so you could tell them apart. Typically your grandparents would show up on very disparate parts of the map.

Andrea went through the exercise and her results were fairly typical. Starting with her birthplace in Opelika, AL, preceding generations lit up southern Alabama, Indiana, and Florida. I watched one little girl plug in her information and lights lit up on several continents. I smiled and said to Andrea, "Watch this."

I followed the prompts, entering all the hometowns for my family. After a lot of repetitious typing, I hit "Done" and waited. The entire world map was dark except for this very bright cluster of lights in the mountain province of the Philippines's largest most northern island.

Coming from an island culture definitely makes tracing your genealogy easier. In recent years I started tracking down branches of the Capuyan and Comicho family tree on a genealogy website. At a family reunion, I met up with a distant cousin who was doing the same for his side of the family. He told me about a DNA test you could take to help trace your ancestry. I'd heard of this test kit. Commercials touted the excitement of an individual born in Kalamazoo discovering he had ancestors from Scotland, Italy, and North Africa. My cousin said he submitted one of these test kits himself and was waiting for the results. I was confused, "But...you're from an island. We may be from the Mountain Province, but I doubt great-great-grandpa was a Scottish highlander."

We laughed at this, and went on to reminisce about what we remembered about the Philippines. I haven't been back in 40 years so my recollection was sketchy. I'm constantly invited by relatives over there to come over for a visit or to travel along with family going back, but thus far I haven't been able to make it work. One of these days, I suspect the frenetic pace of life is going to make we want to go back to "the Island."