There is a TikTok trend gaining momentum: Americans in their twenties and thirties posting videos from Italian apartments, Scottish flats, Irish terraces. The captions follow a pattern: "My great-grandparents left here in 1910" or "This is where my family lived before they emigrated." What unites them is the same reason their great-grandparents departed a century ago — they are seeking something different.
Between 1880 and 1920, more than 4 million Italians emigrated to the United States. Irish emigration was even more dramatic: during the Great Famine, over 1.5 million people left Ireland, and by 1860 more than 4.5 million Irish had arrived in America. Scottish Highlanders were cleared from ancestral lands throughout the 1800s and scattered overseas. Their descendants — roughly 17 million Americans claim Italian ancestry, 32 million claim Irish, millions more Scottish and English — are now reversing the journey. But here is the surprising thing: most have never been back.
Walk through certain neighbourhoods in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago — Italian bakeries, Irish pubs, Scottish societies. Talk to people who work there and they will tell you about grandparents who spoke the language, maintained the traditions, cooked the food exactly the way it was made in the village they left behind. They will tell you they are Italian, Irish, Scottish. They identify with the culture deeply.
Then ask when they last visited. Or if they have ever been. And the answer is often never.
A YouGov study found that while 53% of Americans with Italian ancestry describe themselves as "Italian" or "Italian-American," many have never visited Italy, let alone the specific region their families came from. The heritage is real — it shapes how they cook, how they celebrate, what values they prioritise — but the actual place remains abstract. Southern Italy to them means the stories their grandmother told, not a specific town with a name they can find on a map.
The disconnect between feeling deeply connected to a place and never having experienced it is what drives ancestral travel when it finally happens. People are not going as tourists. They are going because they want to understand what their family left behind, why they left, and what parts of that culture survived immigration and what parts were lost.
The most common inquiry we receive about ancestral travel starts the same way: "My family came from Italy" or "My grandparents were Irish." Then the pause. Then: "I don't really know where to start."
The problem is not lack of interest. Americans interested in genealogy have access to more resources than any previous generation — DNA tests, digitised records, online forums, ancestry databases. Over 75% of Americans report being interested in genealogy, and more than 32 million have taken DNA tests. The information exists.
What is missing is the bridge between knowing "my great-grandfather came from Calabria in 1903" and actually standing in the village he left, finding the church where he was baptised. That bridge requires research, translation, navigation of local bureaucratic systems, and often coordination with historians or genealogists who can access records that are not digitised and are not available to tourists walking in off the street.
Ireland draws Americans whose families left during or after the Great Famine, which means emigration is relatively recent and records are decent for the period. Irish genealogy is complicated by the fact that records were kept locally and inconsistently, and the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin destroyed centuries of documents. What survived is scattered across parish churches, diocesan archives, and local libraries. Visiting Ireland for ancestral research means knowing which parish the family came from — county-level information is not specific enough.
Scotland attracts Americans drawn to clan identity and Highland culture, but the history is more complicated than most realise. Highland Clearances in the 1800s forcibly removed entire communities from ancestral lands. Scottish records are better preserved than Irish records — civil registration started earlier, in 1855 — but clan histories often contradict official records, and sorting through competing narratives requires expertise.
Italy is the most common destination for Americans with southern Italian ancestry, but also the most logistically complex. Mass emigration happened from regions that were poor, rural, and had inconsistent record-keeping. Civil registration began in 1866 after Italian unification, but records before that are held by churches, and southern Italian churches were not always diligent about maintaining them. Villages were often small — sometimes only a few hundred people — and surnames repeat constantly, which makes research difficult without parish records that clearly distinguish between people with the same name.
England is less common as an ancestral destination because English emigration happened over centuries rather than in concentrated waves, but for Americans researching Puritan ancestry or industrial-era emigration, England has extensive records from parish registers starting in the 1500s through to detailed census data from 1841 onward.
Peregrina organises ancestral journeys for Americans seeking pre-arrival research, comprehensive logistics management during the trip, and an itinerary tailored to their specific family history rather than general heritage tourism.
We work with local genealogists, historians, and archivists in Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and England to confirm the existence of records, access non-digitised documents, and provide context that transforms names on a family tree into real individuals who lived in particular locations during particular times. We organise translations where necessary, engage local guides with genuine depth of regional knowledge, and create itineraries that balance research time with the wider experience of the country.
Some clients want half their trip spent tracing family records. Others want one meaningful day visiting the ancestral village, then the rest of the trip experiencing the country as travellers. Both work, and both require different preparation.
If you are American, identify strongly with Italian, Irish, Scottish, or English heritage, and have been thinking about visiting but do not know where to start, get in touch. We will figure out what is realistic, what requires more research, and whether the trip you are imagining can deliver the connection you are hoping for.
Tell us what you have in mind. A destination, a date, a feeling. We'll take it from there.
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