OT: Feeling a connection to where ancestors lived? (ALL welcome to answer)

I bought my first home half a mile from a farm that had been in my family for 50 years. If it were not for my reunion I wouldn't even have looked in that area. My Bgreat-greatparents who died when I was a kid (before I knew who I was) are buried nearby and I tend to their graves with my son. If it were not for them I would not be here. I love my Agranparents and do the same for them, but my great-Agrandparents I never met I don't do the same for. I don't feel a connection I guess. It is the cycle of life. You can hate your bio family but you can't erase your direct lineage.

I felt a link with a certain area of NSW long before I knew that my biological ancestors were from there. I had visited that area when I was 12 and felt a special feeling about it from that time. In fact, when I got my OBC and saw where my bmother was born, I was amazed that she was from that area. My biological ancestors have lived there for about 160 years. Everyone in their town is either related to them, married to someone related to them or related to someone married to someone related to them lol! Btw I was hoping to hear from non-adoptees as well :)

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if your connection starts there. Our primate cousins can sense/smell genetic relationships with other individuals. It helps them make choices regarding competition, cooperation and mating. If you are related to many people in the area, you may have sensed a lot of mirroring. Being in a highly hybrid family that goes back several hundreds of years on all sides but one grandfather's (Ireland), I don't feel any special affinity for any of the ancestors' many places of origin. As a youngster, I always envied those with a closer link to what I considered then more interesting cultures. I felt that being plain American was, well, plain. I see and appreciate the richness and diversity of our culture much better as an adult.

Cath,Many of my maternal ancestors fought for the formation of the Republic of Texas during the 1830's...and I've always felt an incredibly strong connection to this branch of my family tree, even though I was born and raised in Southern California. I've read so many books on the early Texas days, though, that it's difficult to decide whether the connection I feel to the land comes from what I've read or from the stories that have been passed down through the generations.The weird thing about the Texas connection...I discovered a few years ago that one of my best friends, who was also born and raised in Southern California, is actually related to me through our Texan ancestors. When she asked me to research her ancestry, I discovered that some of our direct ancestors were married to each other, as well as being neighbors and friends who traveled the same path of migration from the Carolina's to Tennessee to Texas. (Both of our families were in Stephen Austin's original colony.)They've been having some terrible wildfires in the Bastrop area of Texas recently...and I feel this sense of deep sadness because my ancestors settled Bastrop. Even though I've never visited the area, I still feel this sense of loss that's hard to explain logically.I remember learning in college about Carl Jung's theory of archetypes and genetic memories. It's fascinating to think that memories may actually be stored somewhere in our genes and passed down to future generations. I can get lost in the third circle of thought for hours whenever I ponder that possibility and its implications...

I have to admit as a child I was always hoping that I had some exotic background lol. As a Kiwi by birth, when I used to tease my Aussie born friends, I used to say as a joke "well at least we Kiwis aren't descended from convicts" - of course, the joke is on me, because I have discovered that I am descended from convicts lol. I am proud of my background now :). I know that I wouldn't have cared what my background was as long as my "people" were "good people" which they are. I love the different cultures that we have now in Australia and they have all helped to shape Australia. Same with NZ. Would you have been so interested in reading about Texas though if you hadn't heard the stories passed down through the generations? So it might have been your "connection" to Texas that made you enjoy reading about Texas. In regards to the "link" I felt with the particular area of NSW, I can't really say whether it is just coincidence or not. When I say I felt a link, I'm not going to go too much into it but what happened was that when I was 12, we were billetted in a town down south where I ended up sitting on a rock in a field and feeling a real feeling of peace and never really forgot that feeling. Since that day, I always liked that part of NSW, even though it is not considered the most beautiful part, long before I even knew I was from that general region. However, it is possible that I just felt that sense of peace because it is a peaceful part of the state, who knows. I wasn't with girls I particularly liked (I think I might have "tagged along" when we went to the field) so I know it wasn't the companionship lol. The place we stayed the night before was a lot more beautiful so it can't have been the beauty aspect. All I sort of remember was the undulating fields which can be peaceful in themselves, so maybe it is just that. Btw I've never been able to work out where the billetting school and field were. In the town that I thought we stayed, none of the schools there seem to fit what I remember - so perhaps we stayed near the town and not in it. Weirdly, the only town that has a school/field even close to fitting the bits I remember is my bfamily's home town but that really is just mere coincidence, there is absolutely no way we would have been billetted in such a tiny town unless the teacher knew someone there and I can't imagine that she did. I've never thought of that town as a possibility and it was only by accident whilst doing a "street view walk" on google that I realised that some aspects of the school were similar to the memories of the actualy school I remember and that there were fields with big rocks in them. However, there are probably tons of country towns and town schools with similar features. I am sure that one day I will find out where the actual school was and find, as often happens, that it is nothing like my actual memory lol.