I did some family research a while back, traced my mother's parents through Ellis Island records. That part was easy because I knew the year her parents immigrated from Italy but my father's family was more difficult as they came to US many years earlier before Ellis Island's records. We have no contacts for mother's family in Italy as both her parents were only children so no extended family back there. We don't know much about our great grandparents as families didn't impart much info, our requests for info when we were kids were ignored. Kind of makes research a bit difficult.
DIL in CA is researching her family, one side arrived on the Mayflower and the other were French from Canada. Every once in awhile she finds something about DH and my families, mostly through census. She found that DH's grandmother traveled back and forth to Ireland many times, think her last 2 children were born there. Here we thought they were poor, travel in those days must have be quite expensive for poor people.
This thread of messages have gotten my interest up again. May in Jersey