I was able to trace my family history back quite a ways. (1500's on my mothers fathers side, 1700's on my father's side) One thing that really helped me was buying some family history software and starting with what I knew. I was able to find a lot from reading obituaries, searching news paper archives, and going to some of the area's my family had lived in. What started for me as a weekend project because I was bored, ended up being months of research on each part of my family. Found some really cool stuff though. I have a lot of famous people in my family history (Lon Chaney, Georgia O'Keeffe, Bill Clinton to name a few). Ended up having a whole trunk full of information on my family. Sometimes you can even find forums for certain last names and find other people you are related to that are doing the same thing and fill in some of the gaps.