You know that you're getting old and boring when you start getting interested in your family tree.

In my case, this has taken the form of an obsession with a painting which has been in my parents' flat since I was about three. The story goes that my cousin, who was 4 or 5 at the time, played with some toys and managed to fling them right into the painting, damaging it severely. The cost of the repair was quite high and my aunt/uncle weren't willing to pay for it, while my parents' were, so we paid for it and got to keep it. Since then, it's been in the living room. All I know is that it's my great great grandmother, or my great great great grandmother. The latter would make it Cubling's great great great great grandmother which is quite mindboggling. There is no name, no nothing.

So when in Germany among the toy flinging cousin's parents, I started to ask questions. The painting is a sore thumb in our family. I don't think my aunt/uncle ever forgave themselves for not paying for the restoration, and subsequent loss of this item of familiar jealousy. The good side of this is that I opened the floodgates by only mentioning the painting. What I got is piles of photos of birth, death and marriage certificates. It's all very exciting, and we settled that the woman on the painting is probably my great great grandmother. We even found a potential name for her. Or rather, a name who could potentially be her. If this is so, the painting was done in 1912, a few years before her death. Interestingly, but utterly unrelated, that's the same year that our new home was built.

Now I'm looking for recommendations on good genealogy tools to put the pieces together.