The Book Of Me: Prompt 43 --Emigration, Migration, and Immigration

How Did I Get Here? My Amazing Genealogy Journey

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Prompt 43: Emigration, Migration, and Immigration

This week’s prompt is – Emigration, Migration, and Immigration

Have you ever lived overseas from your place of birth?
Would you want to?
Could you?
Did your ancestors or even a more recent generation?
Do you feel akin to another Country from that in which you were born?
If so have you found any ancestral links in your research that perhaps explains those feelings?
As always share (or not) examples, photographs and perhaps events or rationale

I have never lived overseas. I have to be honest, I don't really think I would want to. I would get too homesick. That's not to say that I wouldn't mind visiting someplace perhaps for two or three weeks. 

My paternal grandfather, Harold Murrell, immigrated to the United States in 1927. He was born in St. Philip parish, Barbados. He was trained as a carpenter but unfortunately there was a lack of work available on the island. He spent a year working in the oil fields of Venezuela before coming to the U.S.  How brave he was to leave everyone he knew and loved behind. I can't even imagine. 

You can read more about his life on these posts:

My Paternal Grandfather, Harold Murrell--Part one.

Travel Tuesday: My Grandfather, Harold Murrell--Part two

My Grandpa, Harold Murrell--Part three

The Book Of Me: Prompt 7 --Grandparents -- Part One

Military and Mappy Monday: Harold Murrell's National Guard Enlistment Card



Barbados Trip 1998 --How Did I Get Here? My Amazing Genealogy Journey
One of my pictures from my Barbados trip.

I think it was in 1998 if I recall correctly, when my parents, brother and I took a trip to Barbados and I met cousins there. I have to say I did feel a sense of connection to that place on arrival. There was something about seeing that ocean breeze blowing through palm trees, the lush landscape, and those beautiful brown faces that whispered a voice in my head that said, "Yes, you are of this place."  That was pretty powerful. It gave me a better sense of who my grandpa was and the sacrifice he made leaving his family behind. 

Many of my ancestors participated in "The Great Migration." My maternal grandparents and my paternal grandmother left North Carolina in their youth and settled eventually in New York in search of work and better opportunity. This too had to have been an extremely difficult thing to do but as I write this I have started to realize that we all do this kind of break away in some way shape or form. The young have to go out and strike out their own path. For some that may be in their own hometown. For others their path may have a longer route. It really is in a way the same but at the same time different. 


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