This is a wonderful thread!
I am most fortunate that my maternal Grandfather was a historical writer and documented our family history back to the arrival in the New World on the Bono Novo in 1620 from England. On board that sailing vessel was William Hampton, who with his wife, settled in Virginia and in 1623 their son Thomas was born who was to become the first American born minister of the Church of England. These were the first of my ancestors to arrive here.
Another branch of the family arrived in the mid 1700's by way of three Hudson brothers from Wales. They were to be the first in a tradition of 3 brothers going to war together... they fought under George Washington in the Continental Army. Later, their decendants, 3 brothers, fought in the Civil War. My grandfather's book recounts a story told to him by his grandmother of the day the Union Soldiers came to the home and ransacked everything. She watched hiden up a nearby tree. My grandfather was born in 1900 and served in WWI with his two brothers, carrying on the family tradition.
After the end of that war, they moved further out West from Texas and he recalls trying to get over the last mountain range to California... The old car couldn't handle it but reverse was apparently more powerful so they crossed the full span of the Sierra Nevadas driving backwards in reverse in their old car circa 1920! (This backwards thing explains a lot...)
Writers ran in the family and he started newpapers everwhere they lived, from Irving, Tx to Elsinore, Ca. We still have newspapers over 100 years old from Irving, Tx. Unfortunately, they were not properly preserved so many have disintegrated. I did find one newpaper that thankfully has been preserved behind glass recently - it has George Washington's obituary.
More recently, if you call the 1950's recent, my mother went out on a date with Elvis Pressley! She was 16 and had won a padgent of some sort. She was staying in a luxury hotel in Los Angeles and was 'fixed up' with Elvis by the concierge (or doorman, I forget). Elvis was staying at the same hotel while filming Love Me Tender - he was not a big star yet. They went out to dinner, chaparoned by my grandmother, of course, and then came back to the hotel sitting lounge where my mom played the piano and he sang. Elvis wrote his phone number on the movie set, the secret name she was to ask for him by and signed the note. She never had the nerve to call him and never saw him again - heck, she was 16! She did carry the note in her wallet for many years until her purse was stolen in a movie theater in Honolulu in the 1980's. Whomever took it I'm sure never knew what they had & it was certainly thrown away after they took her cash!
Sorry to be long winded, but I had the pleasure of knowing all 8 of my grandparents and learned so much. I'll be briefer on dad's side...
My father's side of the family is LDS and came to the Colonies in 1773. There is much well research history on this side too. They made the jouney West from Ohio & Missouri as many did along the Oregon Trail, settling in Idaho & Utah. My paternal Grandfather, also born in 1900, was a doctor who worked in the mines in Idaho and later became the town doctor in Pleasant Grove, Utah.
It was my paternal Grandmother that started my love of crafting of all kinds (mom had started me sewing at 5). I would come over from Hawaii every summer and spend a month with all of my cousins while she instructed us on making mason jar lid pincusions and styrofoam egg carton roses, etc.
Random fun fact... my DH and I have concluded that about 150 years ago, our ancestors probably lived within 10 miles of each other in Tennessee!