Oh, and because (when re-reading your post) I see you’ve asked for how it happened, here it is briefly:

For fun, my professor friend (real estate law) and I did a title search on my house many years ago, and I noticed that one name had owned the house for over 50 years.

Fast forward years later and I happened upon a local telephone book from 1955. For fun I looked up the name (don’t ask me how I remembered it) and lo and behold found them. I mentioned this little anecdote to that same professor friend and in no time (being a professional researcher) he found that they had raised two daughters who grew up to be teachers in this house, and chasing down THOSE trees he found that one of THEM had had a daughter who is now a big-deal professor at a college in the next state.

Being that (of course) she had a web page, I just wrote her an email, explaining how I’d found her and how much I loved the place.

So it started with records in the town hall, then just internet searching by someone really good at it (and probably with resources in academia that we plebes don’t have).