Cheryl Wilson Fornelli, Aurora, Illinois: In 1845, my husband’s ancestors set out in covered wagons from Crawford County, Pennsylvania, on the Old Joliet Road (now a defunct section of Route 66) for McHenry County, Illinois. Upon arrival, the family encountered a malaria outbreak. They left, intending to return to Pennsylvania. However, misfortune struck again on the return journey, when the patriarch of the family died, most likely of malaria. The family instead settled in Porter County, Indiana.

Dan Kraft, Boston, Massachusetts: My ancestors Edward Fuller, his wife (name unknown), and their son Samuel, along with the other Mayflower passengers, were given permission by the Company of Merchant Adventurers to settle in the Colony of Virginia. However, strong winter seas forced the ship to land in Massachusetts, where my ancestors and their shipmates founded the Plymouth colony.

Jennifer Ewing, Urbandale, Iowa: My great-great-grandfather Ludwig DeGraff came to Chicago from Germany in 1847 at age 16. Ludwig was extremely homesick. He worked as a wagon painter and was eventually able to save enough money to relocate; his plan was to move to German Valley, Illinois, where he would be among other German speakers. However, he got off the train at the wrong stop and ended up in Forreston, which at the time was largely unsettled. For reasons now unknown, Ludwig decided to stay. He had a successful life in Forreston. He built the town’s third house and established its first funeral home and furniture store. And Ludwig was lonely no longer—he married Jantje (Boecklman) in 1868 and together they had seven children. Ludwig died in Forreston in 1926.

John W. Coffey, Raleigh, North Carolina: My 3x great-grandfather Jules François Marie Lesage (1811-1888) was born in Paris and immigrated to New York in the early 1830s. In 1850, Julius (as he was now known) decided to join the French utopian socialist colony of Nauvoo, Illinois. He and his family traveled west along the Ohio River, but the boat's paddle wheel broke and the passengers became stranded in what was then western Virginia. Too impatient to wait for repairs to the boat, Julius gave up on Nauvoo and purchased a farm fronting the Ohio River in a place known today as Lesage, West Virginia. His decision was fortuitous—the Nauvoo community was beset with troubles and by 1856 had collapsed entirely.