It is easy to trace parts of your ancestry so long as things were recorded when the events happened, births, deaths, marriages, etc.
In my mother’s case, her biological mother died when she was a toddler, the father remarried and had another child and the father died shortly afterwards, leaving my mother and 2 siblings to be raised by her stepmother. All this happened before my mother was 11 years old.
It’s obvious my Grandfather’s name was changed at some point, but after years of research we can’t find anything to indicate when he came to the USA or where he immigrated from.
Just to show you how things change, my Grandmother on my Father’s side of the family was born in 1906, she was born out in the middle of the woods of rural North Florida, there were no hospitals to go to for the birth of my Grandmother, a midwife was present to help the mother thru birth, no birth records were ever recorded, we don’t know exactly what day or year she was born, the 1906 date was a best estimate.
In fact when I was a child, as a family we went on a vacation to Canada, which required a birth certificate to enter, my Grandmother could not produce a birth certificate because her birth was never recorded, we had to get an affidavit signed by people who knew her as child to say, when they thought she was born.
Her birth was a little over 100 years ago, imagine what the records were like 200 years ago or longer.
Forget formal birth records! For me, the mystery remains as to why the written correspondence, photo albums, specific keepsakes, etc. left behind didn't provide enough clues.
Even a hundred years ago, people wrote letters to each other, containing vital bits of info like, "Visited with your cousin Clem last Saturday, the day after the big July 4th celebrations here in Podunk Town. He'll be marryin' next week - 17-y-o girl named Anna Reilly from neighboring Bumfunkville, father (blind in one eye) is the pastor of the Anglican Church. Anyways, Clem, he says he got discharged from the Army on Feb. 2 last year because..."
When you digitally scan those hundreds of precious letters - love letters, angry letters, etc. - which those people presciently saved, because they held such high sentimental value, and then pick them apart for key words which are then used for Internet searches...
I have 19th-century obits published in the Danish-language church newsletter of the Minnesota town from which my maternal line hails...
Regards,
Have you tried looking for your grandmother on the 1910 US census? It should tell you what her family thought her age was in 1910.