My family did genealogy for many generations. I was able to use both parents written history to connect on Ancestry and find the records to prove lineage. DNA mapping also is useful. I've met noble families in Eastern Europe and my DNA matches right around Piotr Vyliki !! As an American I never thought too much about my ancestors overseas, so for me it's very exciting.
I join social networking groups and we swap our DNA to find relationships, I mean we lil Russian right, hacking it all :D