For some reason, both of my grandmothers' genealogies have always been somewhat of a dead end. It took me about 30 seconds to trace my grandfathers back into the 1600s, but I could only go back a couple of generations on my grandmothers.

I had a breakthrough on my mom's mom today. I had punched her grandfather's name, Samuel L. Groves, into a genealogy search engine. My family had always accepted his wife's name as Julie or Julia Breeden. I'd never been able to trace beyond her.

Today I noticed a couple of entries with a Samuel L. Groves, born in 1839, married to a Julia Breeding.

At first I dismissed it. Then I thought about it. Breeden. Breeding. Breedin'.

Breedin'. Then I thought about how my living relatives on that side of the family talk.

Breedin' it is.

Breakthrough. The Breeding family left all sorts of traces of itself hanging around. Next thing I know, I've traced my grandmother's line back to Baron Hans Jost Heydt, the first settler of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Another part of the line went back to Massachusetts in the 1600s. No Mayflower passengers, but they were in the area by the 1630s.

That part of the family had someone named Wallen in it. In that same tree, that woman's father's last name was listed as Walling.

Soundex is my friend.