I have only been chipping away at it for a couple of years and it has been a slow process. To make matters a bit harder my folks are divorced and my father is not keen on family tree stuff.

If your Lulu is my Lulu, she will be the wife of Emil Louis Doering, who would be my Great Uncle. This Emil was born in Kansas City around 1897. Emil is my most elusive member in that I do not know where he is after the 1930 census. My Grandfather Harry Doering and Great Aunt Louise Margaret Doering moved to Calif. in the early 1920's.

Have you searched any of the census information on Ancestry? I know that I have come across a "Minnie" a number of times. I have had a terrible time with locating my Grand Father's parents E. Louis or Emil Louis Doering and Louise or Louisa (Pyetzki) Doering. I have photos that tell me that they were in Los Angeles during the 1930's and have an address for them at one point in 1938 that matches to addresses given on marriage certificate for Lulu (Russell) and Emil in 1925-26 (they married in LA but returned to Kansas City, MO), but have yet to locate them in the census for 1930.

Do you have photos of any of your people? I have a photo but I am not sure if the lady in the photo is Lulu or Emil's first wife Winona. My Great Aunt Louise Margaret married Dan Anderson and they had a farm of some sort in or around Porterville / Linsay area which I think is in Tulare County. I am waiting on Louise's death certificate which indicates she died in Alameda but I am waiting for the cert. for the details. I am interested in the details on the death certificates as they seem to help me a lot, and I don't know where Louise is buried but know that she died in 1995 and my Father either knew and did not care to tell me or he never knew. I had assumed she had died for some reason when I was small. I am hoping we can help each other sort things out. Plus if your Doerings are not mine I can still point you to people that I have been in contact with back east that have been working there trees a lot longer than we have. Did you know that there is a town in Ill. called Doering? That surprised me a bunch. The decendant from that line feels that my Doering are part of his yet we can't find the link. I think that they are part of a line that might have started in St. Louis, MO.

All in all I have collected information that seems relevant and it would seem that there is a pattern in my line where the first and middle names are "re-used" so the given name might not exactly match the name the person is known by but after collecting death certificates and doing census search things do come together.