Everyone has a story of where you came from. Our ancestry has become a topic of recent popularity as of late, with people paying money to send their DNA to a company that will then track down their ancestry for them.
When I think of my ancestry, I think of one thing: Italian. My mom was first generation Italian. My Grandparents left their friends and family behind and immigrated to the country before my mom was born. My mom’s family tree stems back generations and generations to Italy, so I knew that I had strong ancestral ties to Italy. However, my family knows little about my dad’s side. So for Christmas two years ago, my sisters and I paid to have my dad send his DNA to Ancestry.com so we could finally figure out the other part of our ancestry.
My father’s ancestry came back to reveal that we were mostly Croatian. With a last name like Meyers, my family was all shocked to learn that we were mostly Croatian on my dad’s background as we thought we were German. But it turns out that during and following World War II, my dad’s side left Germany and immigrated to Croatia to Split and the Island of Broc.
Based on my family’s ancestry results, my family planned a summer trip abroad to visit each Croatia and Italy to learn more about our ancestry. This trip inspired me to complete one of this week’s web assignments in which we were to use Google Maps to tell a story of a trip!
So, using Google Maps, I got to tell the story of my family tree and the trip I took over this summer! Google Maps was really interesting to use because it also gave me the chance to add commentary to each location. I added to each location commentary how it related to my family trip and my family ancestry. It was really cool to see it come together on a map like this
This assignment was a lot of fun to complete. When we completed my ancestry.com, we got our results back with a map highlighting our ancestry, but it was interesting getting the chance to create a map based on my ancestry of where I actually traveled.
This was also my first time using Google Maps like this. Google Maps is very user friendly and has a lot of interesting features. For example, Google Maps was really interesting to use because it gave me the chance to add commentary to each location. I added to each location commentary how it related to my family trip and my family ancestry. It was really cool to see it come together on a map like this that combined my ancestry with my travels! It was also really cool because I could create my own map and edit it! I edited the locations on my map by changing the color to show my mom and dad’s ancestry! I didn’t realize all that Google Maps could do, and I could definitely see this being useful for some creative projects I complete in the future!
