Let's see....

According to the tracings my great-aunt paid to have done, the records peter out around 750 CE. Apparently we were some sort of chieftains or leaders (my surname means "Keeper of the Sacred" or, in modern parlance, "Goalie"). We were among the princelings of Germany and up to about 1934 still received payments from the family "county" there. One of my ancestors was Ludwig Windhorst -- look him up in Wikipedia.

Then again, another helped slaves escape in the South, got them across the Ohio and into the free territory of Illinois, and then took them back across the Mississippi and re-sold them back into slavery.

Another was a pro baseball pitcher; he got syphilis, left baseball, and eventually fell in the Mississippi and drowned -- we don't know if he was drunk at the time or not.

But what difference does it make NOW?

"I once met a sad little lizard who bragged that his ancestors had been dinosaurs."