Is this anyone here?

There is about 5 differen ways that my last name has been changed over the years.
 
My great grandmother was a genealogy freak. She traced our family all the way back to Germany in the 1600's. My first descendant in America was Thomas Bier (later the name changed to the American spelling, Beer He came over as a boy (age 6) in 1655 by himself on a ship all the way from Germany! His parents had died and other family sent him here to live with the mother's sister.

Now, I said my great grandmother. She did all this without the internet! I don't know how, but she spent years visiting towns, reading journals, meeting distant relatives, visiting cemeteries, etc. Quite a lot of detective work. What an amazing woman she must've been.
 
To do all that without the internet is just too amazing.
Court house records, census records, cemeteries, etc. A lot of hard work. Props to her. I hope you keep a copy so that others may appreciate it.
If you ever decide to share all that information on ancestry.com you really should write her story as a tribute to her work.
I have gone back as far as 1550 in France and that is it. The King of France made it mandatory for churches to start keeping records of everyone in the Parish around that time but before 1550, I would have to go to France and really dig.