I went to one of the big genealogical sites a few years back and punched in a couple names - was surprised to find out that there was a "line" already in place from my paternal grandmother back to Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. I'm assuming that someone else's ancestry intersected with ours at some point, because even though one of my much older cousins had been doing some research, what she had at the time didn't include the stuff I was looking at.
However my cousin was able to trace from my paternal grandfather back to the Cherokee ancestor we always knew we had, having been told that our granddad was "part Indian" all along but not knowing any of the details. I know she was born in Chattanooga as part of the Cherokee Nation but how she (or her children) ended up in Virginia, I don't know.
It was also surprising to find out that my father had more siblings than I suspect even he knew about - there was one that had died very young, either before my father was born or when he was just an infant himself, and I'd never heard of his existence before seeing him listed there as one of my grandparents' known offspring.
I may look back into this stuff if I can find the time - I never knew any of my grandparents, the last surviving one died before I was a year old - so there was a lot of info that was just never passed on, or that survived only in bits and pieces and none of us have all the bits and pieces. I really think it would be fascinating because I already know that my paternal grandfather was born in the 1870s... which is quite something, considering that I was born almost a century later. Go back one more generation and we're already talking Civil War times and before.
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