Lost in the corridors of time

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way 

I doubted if I should ever come back.

-- Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"                          

A week ago, I signed up for a two-week trial at Ancestry.com, and I think I've been on it about 100 hours since that time.  I've wanted for quite a while to look into my family history, and now that I've got the time, I thought I'd go for it.

My mom, aged two or so, wearing her much older brother's hat.

If you've ever done it, you know that this kind of endeavor is both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.  As I mentioned briefly the other day, when you uncover little tidbits that you were completely unaware of (like turning grey at an early age runs in the family), it's exciting but when you run down connection after connection that all turn out not to be the person you're related to, or the trail goes cold because Ancestry doesn't have much in the way of records in that country, you've spent all that time for nothing.  

So far, I've accomplished quite a bit.   I've uncovered a great deal of my son's dad's family, all the way back to an ancestor who was born in 1801 (I really want to break into the 1700's!), and have filled in quite a bit on my side, though I'll have to spring for a one-month membership in the German Ancestry.com to get much farther with that.  I've become pretty obsessive about it -- today I had a number of things on my agenda, but I wound up spending almost all the livelong day chasing down "hints," as they call them.

 Here's my mom again, a little older, a little more bada$$ than in the other picture.

I'm curious whether any of you have gone down this road and have any advice for me.  Is any one of the sites better than another?  Do I need to join more than one?  Have you discovered tricks or do you have any tips that would be helpful?

I've always loved the Robert Frost poem quoted above, and have thought a lot about how "way leads on to way" has been true in my life -- the roads do diverge, we do make choices and at some point can never go back.  I guess it applies to ancestor-hunting too, that you don't know where it leads and in a sense, you can't un-discover things, once they are discovered.  I learned something quite interesting about my grandmother the other day, for example.

I'd love to hear from those who have done this kind of work.  Leave me a comment or send me a message, okay?

It's getting late on Saturday, so -- happy Sunday, one and all.