Kensington is building on its Ancestry partnership with the introduction of new Personal Heritage Journeys including new and enhanced itineraries in Sicily, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Germany, Scotland, Poland, England and Ghana.
“The most meaningful journeys are personal, shaped not only by where someone travels, but by why that place matters to them,” said Kensington President Helen Giontsis. “By expanding our work with AncestryProGenealogists, we can help more travelers experience the places connected to their family history through journeys designed entirely around their individual discoveries.”
Tailored Research for Personal Discovery
The Personal Heritage Journeys can “customize how deeply they wish to explore their family story. “Three levels of research options offer a range of pre-trip genealogical work, from foundational research to comprehensive investigation into a family's tree and history, Kensington said.
Exploring Ancestral Roots Across the Globe
- Ghana: Reclaim a Story Beyond the Door of No Return
Travelers will visit the Door of No Return, exit gates in coastal slave castles, and take in the sights and sounds of Accra, Kumasi and Elmina. “Ghana is central to the origin story of so many who comprise the African diaspora,” Kensington said. “Advances in DNA testing have transformed their ability to trace roots back to this part of Africa, restoring connections fractured through centuries of the transatlantic slave trade.”
- Sicily: Walk in the Shade of a Grandfather’s Olive Grove
This journey might lead from a baptismal record in Palermo to the hillside town a family left a generation ago, or even to the olive grove that fed them,” Kensington said. “Families can follow the life of a grandfather and where he harvested his crop, meet the families still living on the land, and taste the olives grown on the exact same soil.”
- Ireland: Heritage Journey Across the Emerald North
This route will explore Dublin, Belfast, Derry-Londonderry and Donegal, culminating in Galway. “Travelers can trace the emigration story at the Ulster American Folk Park, perhaps learning why their own great-grandmother left as a teenager, then spend a day with a genealogist walking the land she knew and visiting the churches she might have attended, all set against a backdrop of traditional music and food,” Kensington said.
The itinerary explores the Old Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw and Krakow’s Kazimierz Jewish Quarter. “The Lodz Ghetto, a privately guided tour of Oskar Schindler's factory in Krakow, and a guided visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum provide a profound understanding of the brutal reality the Holocaust and World War II.
Connecting Past and Present
“Family history takes on a whole new meaning when you can experience it beyond names and dates – by walking the streets your ancestors knew, visiting the places that shaped their lives and seeing firsthand where your story began," said Kyle Betit, Ancestry’s travel program manager and senior genealogist.
“Through our work with Kensington, the discoveries uncovered through DNA and family trees become deeply personal journeys rooted in each traveler’s unique history,” Betit added.
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