That was my issue at first, as well. My mother was the eldest of two children 12 years apart, and my uncle isn't much older than me. My mother and grandparents had passed before I got interested, as did my mother's younger sister, who traced their family back to Germany.

I knew next to nothing about my grandfather's family except a few stories.

But about 8 years ago when I was starting, I looked up the family name and location and found a post from someone who turned out to be my 3rd cousin once removed. He'd been working on the family tree from his side but also had a fair bit on my side, and he gave it all to me. I've been able to build on that back to Ireland, and along the way I found out we had far, far more cousins than any of us in Calif had known.

It's so exciting, and the dna is a whole new level of finding cousins and confirming them.

Now if only I could get more people interested in testing!