I got curious about all this as there was scant to go on, so I went to one of those genealogy sites and found my grandmother, born in Vermont in 1875, and there she was, plain as day. That turned out to be a dead end so I looked for my dad's birth and found him; his records in Southern Indiana just across the line from Cincinnati and not where he was born according to family lore but records nevertheless. Dead end again but not really as the Internet worked its magic and up popped the photo in the upper left.
On sun soaked Tuesday afternoons with half the week's work (or as much of it as is going to get done) over with, I've been gazing out the window and doing some constructive daydreaming. I've come to the conclusion, trite as it may be, that the Internet is our train system of our times; a path of connected points of information much like train stations next to iron rails. You can track it out (pun intended) because the historical record just sits there ready to be explored.
The danger is, of course, that we won't rely on memories and tales of turn of the century Maine, a chance birth in some Ohio River town in some bum shackle town and off to a terminus in northern Indiana where to spend a few years then transit back a Beetlejuice town in Vermont. Later, out of options, the route led to Michigan, probably a lot of hardscrabble and hanging on in the midst of a family tragedy that never was made clear and of which there is no record extant.
I think I'd prefer the telling of the tale again in the fall, late in the day, cold rain outside and perhaps a fireplace embering up, dinner on the stove and someone saying "Well for pity's sake...I'd forgotten all about that".