Interesting topic. Just over the last year I was digging into my family. Not in the hope to see which kinda famous person might show up. Simply to see where it leads, and from where the folks are all coming. Seem they are mostly all around my county. Only one of my grandmas is from about 300km away and going even more back in time there are names that might come from the Balkans. My tree is now showing into high 1600s. But from around 1820 and older it gets more difficult. Seems only around this time they had invented the manual "Excel" table form. 
Before it was just a writing of someone born at a given date as the son of and, to make it additionally difficult, mostly in Latin.
Interesting website to find all kinds of people's registers (birth, death, marriage) in Germany: https://data.matricula-online.eu/en/ (but it is not possible to see for example the birth entry of people younger than 120 years).
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
For the most part, you can just listen, but an occasional glance might help…
