Genealogy tour guide James Denheim and his clients, who were following their roots back to Germany, were expecting to stop in for coffee with some shirttail relatives and visit for an hour, no more. Instead, at 9:30 in the morning, they were greeted by the smell of roasting wild pig. The clients' distant German cousin had shot the pig himself on the ancestral family lands. Quick morning coffee turned into a luncheon feast, where tourists and kin formed lifelong bonds spanning not only the Atlantic but genealogical gaps.

On another family history trip, Denheim recalls, the museum curator in a tiny German village suddenly became excited upon learning the client's name. The curator led the group up to the museum's second floor — where he proudly pointed out a baptismal font that had been carved by the client's ancestor in 1707.