Countries of Origin

For my blogpost, I will be writing about my countries of origin. My dad’s side of the family originally came from Croatia, and my mothers side of the family originally came from Germany. I’ve talked to my dad about coming from Croatia quite a lot, and I learned that my great grandfather was the first of his family to migrate to the US. He came over through Ellis Island sometime between the 1920s-1930s. Our last name was originally Romich, but at Ellis Island they cut off the “h” to make it easier to pronounce. He moved to Chicago, where he raised my grandpa, and where my grandpa raised my father. My mother’s side of the family came from Germany in the 1860’s to New York City via a boat, before Ellis Island existed. My mothers maiden name is Schneckloth, which they did not change when they migrated over, but you can tell it is very german sounding. They settled in Iowa as farmers, and that is where my mom grew up, but moved to Chicago with my dad after they were married. We visited Germany about 3 years ago as my mom always had wanted to go because it’s where her family is from, and we have discussed maybe visiting Croatia eventually, as my dad’s mom and dad visit there quite frequently. We have a few family friends in Germany that we often write to, and when we visited we visited them as well and they were able to show us a lot of the German culture, from food to holiday traditions, and it was very interesting to see the country that my family originates from. I think that if everyone has the chance to, at some point in their lives, they should visit the countries they originated from because its very interesting to see where your roots come from.