When you start exploring a new-to-you homeland, it’s easy to feel a bit lost. You don’t know what records are available, or how to find and access them. If the records are in another language, you may not know how to read them. And if the history or culture is unfamiliar, you can’t place your family’s experience in a wider context.
In fact, exploring your family history in a foreign homeland is not unlike planning to travel there. Travelers spend a lot of time looking at maps, learning new words, and absorbing local lore. But if you were actually traveling there, you could learn your way around from expert guides, fellow travelers, and the locals.
For some homelands, expert genealogy guides are available—in fact, they appear regularly in the pages of…
