A recent trip to Maine got me to thinking about the importance of places in a family’s history. We just visited a cottage on the coast that is owner by my husband’s family. They purchased it a few years ago, as a place for the family to vacation every year. It is a nice little place in a quaint seaside village with many other cottages. The cottages were all built in the late 1800’s and as I looked around at them, I began to wonder how many of the cottages are still in the hands of the families whose ancestors had built them years ago. I was unable to find any answers to my query as we were only there a few days.
After I had finished thinking about the cottages, I also began to wonder how many people actually live in homes or on land that has been in their family for multiple generations. I do not know of any in my family, but I do live in Vermont and there are some people that I know of that live in the homes that their ancestors built. Some of them even farm the same land that their ancestors farmed.
I am not sure how common it is in other parts of the country for families to stay put in one place for more than one generation. It does not appear to be a very common thing. Children grow up and leave home to go to college, and even those that do not often move elsewhere in search of adventure or opportunity. Many people end up living in different places than their parents, and while they might go back to visit them, they do not wish to live in their childhood home at any time in the future. The conclusion that I have arrived at on the importance of places in a family’s history is that places were once very important, but as time has passed they have become less so.