Hello all, I've just joined family tree circles and am very happy to have found you! I started researching my family history about 5 years ago. Tracking my maternal lineage was a great adventure that has taken me all the way back to the year 524! Mom's family is documented from 1107 and traceable to 524. I got lucky with that branch. Dad's side has been quite the opposite. I started with very little info and much of that was false. Grandmother made it quite a challenge to find any thing about her family and impossible to find my Grandfather's family. I kept searching and finally found her family! HA! False names/places didn't stop me. But my father's lineage is still a mystery and I've run out of ideas and places to search. I'm trying to find CHARLES LOUIS MCCLAIN SR., and all I know about him is he was born in Pennsylvania in 1894, he was a truck driver, moved to Sacramento, California abt. 1919. He and grandmother had 3 children born in Sacto.; MARY ELIZABETH, GERTRUDE BEATRICE, and CHARLES LOUIS JR. Grandfather and Bea both disappeared between 1932 and 1935. Grandmother's name was HELEN MAY MILLER, dob April 19, 1902. She lived in Milwaukee Ward 11. Her parents were HAMPTON D. MILLER and MARIE A KRUEGER of Wisconsin.

If there are any von Westernhagen researchers/relations out there, I'd love to hear from you! Thank-you all