There was only one living aunt left from my mother's family and she and I both shared an interest in genealogy. I'd asked many times if she could remember anything that might help uncover the birthplaces of her paternal grandparents but she was the baby of the family and her father's parents had died long before she was born so she knew next to nothing about them. We were both disappointed, she more than I since she always mentioned how sorry she was to be of so little help. I'm pretty stubborn though and kept up the search anyway, checking back now and then with my aunt just in case something might have jogged her memory. This went on for maybe 15 years, until my aunt died. About a week after the funeral I decided to spend the day family researching - the morning at the courthouse, the afternoon at the state historical society. Even though I wasn't specifically looking for that branch of the family, as luck would have it, at the courthouse I came across the name of the sister of my great grandmother in the death index. This wasn't particularly exciting - I've rarely come upon a death record that listed anything more than country of birth but I pulled the book anyway and there on the certificate was not only the name of both her parents, including the maiden name of the mother, but also the towns in Luxemburg and Belgium where the parents lived! Just like that, one brick wall that had both my aunt and I stuck crumbled to dust! After this stroke of luck, my first instinct was to skip the historical society and go home to the atlas to pinpoint these ancestral villages but since I was downtown already decided to stick with the original plan. And a good thing I did! At the historical society was a naturalization record for a man with an Americanized version of my great grandfather's name. Sure enough, it was him and the record listed both date and port of arrival - a major crack in the last brick wall! It took a little more work but before long I was able to cross the Atlantic with both these elusive families, tracing each back to the late 1600's. Was it coincidence that the very first time I returned to genealogy after my aunt's death I found both the ancestors we had looked for so long or was it a gift from my aunt who now finally had the answers to share?