Ancestors who lived abroad: Who were they?

Today, we bade farewell to our youngest at the airport. He’s flying to Iceland, and then to Frankfurt, where he will take a train to a smaller German city. He’s doing a semester abroad at a German university, and will be gone for the next 5 months.

He’s not the first member of the family to be thrust into an unfamiliar and faraway land for school, military service, or work. I was thinking about those who came before him, stretching back many generations.

His older sister made a similar educational journey to England last year, as did Ian more than 30 years before. Ian’s father spent a year at the University of Glasgow from 1961 to 1962, when overseas travel for most people still required getting on an ocean liner:

A great aunt who was a high school French teacher developed her language skills while studying painting in Paris in the 1920s. Family legend has her attending the Sorbonne, but we haven’t been able to confirm that.

Regardless, imagine living in Paris in the 1920s! Art. Cafes. Food. People from all over the world. Did she encounter any members of the “Lost Generation” who spent time there after World War I, writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway?

Her older brother also spent time in France, but not to study. He sailed for France in May 1918 as a first lieutenant in the Army, in charge of a field artillery battery. He participated in the Saint Mihiel offensive that September, and was on the front lines in the days before the November 11 Armistice.

This great uncle decided to remain in France after the war, first as an instructor at the French NCO academy at Saint-Maixent. Later he served in Luxembourg as a member of the international forces stationed there, and loved it. This picture shows a group of them with Yvonne C., a local lady who my great uncle fell in love with:

There are many more examples of family members who were drafted. They include Nicole’s brother and late father, as well as Ian’s father and maternal grandfather. For millions of Americans, overseas military service was a common experience during the 1900s, through two world wars, wars in Asia, and the Cold War:

A third type of international experience relates to work. When we were younger, Nicole was hired by a Japanese company and lived in Japan. Ian worked in Taiwan as a journalist.

There is a record of a much earlier overseas worker, Ian’s great-great-grandfather Patrick Lynch. A family story written down by Ian’s great aunt (the same one who went to Paris in the 1920s) explains how he ended up overseas, probably in the early 1870s:

“One year, the price of hops fell after my grandfather had held onto his crop too long hoping for a higher price and he was wiped out. So he went back to his original trade, a stonemason. He had worked on public buildings in Cuba and also in Washington, D.C. and in New York City.”

It’s hard to imagine my Lynch ancestor, accustomed to blizzards and the rhythm of farm life in northern New York, suddenly finding himself under a sweltering Caribbean sun, working with Cuban workers on a courthouse or administrative building. A stranger in a strange land!

Somewhere, in a dusty archive in Havana or New York, there might be a record of his time there, but we have yet to find it.

There’s a final type of international traveller which can be found in the family tree of every person reading this newsletter: migrants.

They weren’t sojourners, planning to return home after a few months or years. They migrated across seas and distant land borders, maybe willingly, sometimes forced, often driven by desperation or a desire for a better life. They knew as they boarded the ships for America that they might never return.

As for our son, soon to step off a train in an unfamiliar city, we will miss him. And we will worry, as all parents do when their children travel to a distant land. However, we also know he’ll make friends and have experiences that will open his eyes to the world, and leave stories for the generations to come. 

Safe travels, young one!