My daughter got into it a few years ago and turned up some information that amazed me. For example, my dad's mother was a Smith by birth, and I always assumed that tracing a name like that would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Not so! Census records would list a Smith family with a particular set of kids, their ages and names, and the respective kids were listed again 10 years later, 10 years older and the same list of names, minus the ones who grew up and lived elsewhere, but not too far away and clearly were the same ones because their ages were right. There's much more information out there than I ever expected to see. My daughter lives in St. Louis and when she discovered that the family had lived in Greene County Illinois before some of them moved to Nebraska, she drove about an hour and a half and found grave stones and sent me pictures. Nobody in Greene County today still has my dad's family name.
She found that one of my Dad's ancestors in Virginia had signed a petition in the Revolutionary era. I had always assumed, since my aunts had talked about them being Scots Irish, that they hadn't come to this country until the Potato Famine in the mid 19th century, but they were talking about their mother's family and didn't know much about their dad's. I think women are generally more likely to tell their kids about their own family background rather than their husband's, and it's ironic because it's not that side of the family that gives you your name.
The long standing pattern of women taking their husband's names makes it much harder to trace the female lines. Without DD's research we didn't even know my great grandmother's maiden name. She found that she was listed as a weaver. I had her picture but never knew that about her.
The fact is that ten generations back (starting with 2 parents, then 4 grandparents, then 8 great grand, etc.) there were 1024 people who had equal opportunity to pass on their genes to you and only one male antecedent passed on the last name you got at birth. That's just the generations you can count on your fingers while operating a calculator. One more generation back and each of us had 2048 9-great grandparents! It's not surprising that the farther you go back the more likely you are to discover that you're related to someone interesting.