I have several brick walls also. One is that I am descended from a certain family name in Penn Dutch country in PA. Ha! That probably narrows it down to oh, say, thousands of people. As you probably know, there are a million Millers, Yoders, Fishers, etc.
Another is someone who emigrated from Scotland in the early 1800’s. Haven’t started my out of the country digs yet, unless they are well documented.
I’ve got a royal line going to the Howards in tudor England. That seems interesting. And I am a direct descendent of the early Scottish Kings, Malcolm being one of them. But as you know, there’s no end to this stuff.
What I find interesting is if you can find stories from even several hundred years ago, there are traits that really do seem to carry through many generations. My family was always politically involved, always readers and either educated or self taught, always religious pioneers, always ferociously dedicated to personal freedom and liberty. There is also a physical trait I have traced back about 400 years, that is interesting.
I have Millers in my family which can be tricky. I believe Mignier dit Lagace and then Meunier were the earlier spellings in my line.
I don't trace back to any Howards that I've found. Tudors. I get them all confused with Plantagenets, Stuarts, should know my English history better.
My anecdotal material is the most interesting even if they weren't royals. I visited Warwick Castle in the 70's, and now I find that I may be a direct descendant to of first earl, Thomas? Newburgh, origin Normandy, changed to Newberry in early Am.
My favorite one takes too long to tell.
If you have Strong in your lineage, it's a good bet you are a Mayflower Descendant. I never found any for me.
The genetic traits are fascinating if you can find a few clues, not much got recorded way back when.
Yes, there's no end to this stuff, and I got burned out on mine unless something new crops up and did a lot of research helping a distant cousin find missing lines in his enormous database. Two in particular he badly wanted. Well, we worked together and found them, but I did a lot of the grunt work. He loved old cars and trucks, so we tracked down a family who had a factory in the Bronx, found tons of stuff in the archives of the NYT about that. He was thrilled to meet the grandson who showed up at a reunion (I can't get to them out east). The other one was a family name killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. I stumbled over their most recent origins. They were very hard to research because they were a missionary family in oh boy, near the Congo, and rarely showed up on censuses, we used the ones they did, passport records and Wheaton church records. One was still there last I knew. The ones in the bombing shared his surname; mine was a variant, but when we got them back far enough, I was a little more closely related than he, 9th cousins.
I could find a lot more if I could travel. Isn't it exciting when you break through a brick wall? Some I doubt I ever will.
Yes, the common names are the very worst! That's where I got major stuck.