Today with Ancestry.com finding records has become much easier.
After she died and family was going through her papers, one item found was like the Holy Grail. It was a German document stating my maternal great grandfather and great grandmother were visiting family for a certain period of time at a certain location. The location turned out to be my great grandfather's childhood home where family members lived (and still do to this day). An interesting sidebar to this trip was a story about my great grandparents going to the Dutch embassy to get out of Germany since WWI was starting and the Germans were going to force my great grandfather to enlist in the German army since he was born a German.
At present I have 728 people listed. I try to keep the 'branches' tight so I focus on the main lineage. It is easy to go off to one side of the tree but it then becomes burdensome to fill in the blanks. I've been able to go back four generations on my maternal and paternal sides. I also have 146 photos along with a few stories. One project I just finished was my father's military history during WWII. It was fascinating to work on.
A few tidbits I thought were interesting:
- A paternal great Aunt of mine died due to the fire on the SS Morro Castle off the shore of New Jersey in 1934. My husband's maternal grandfather was the Chief Engineer for the Ward Line of which the SS Morro Castle belongs to. Even stranger - his grandfather and my great aunt both had Clark as their last name though no relation.
- All my direct ancestors who came to the US through New York City came in at Castle Garden except for my maternal grandfather who came through Ellis Island in 1895. Castle Garden in downtown Manhattan was used until 1892 when Ellis Island was opened. My great-great maternal grandparents came through Philadelphia.
- My paternal grandfather, as an assistant District Attorney, worked in the investigation of the death of William D'Olier, a key figure in the 1928 Queens County sewer scandal. He also worked on the 1925 "Dumb-Bell Murder"; crime story of Ruth Snyder & Judd Gray.
- My paternal aunt was the first female to work in the Queens County District Attorney's office.
- My maternal great-grandfather's brother was the Mayor of Lohlbach, Germany in the early 1900s and the family is still there in the original home of the family going back to the 1800s.
