I tried some years ago, back when... haha.
When I was concentrating on my mom's side, I got so frustrated with her dad's line... his family name was apparently (could have been) spelled differently in the old world. It became too confusing - I stopped. I also used rootsweb.com... in fact, if the database carries from way back, it might still have some of my correspondences with other searchers. I used ancestry.com also... it was free then. Another to try, which is still free I think, is familysearch.org. If I'm not mistaken it's Mormon based - a Mormon family member uses... she was able to connect my maternal grandmother's (her mom - the wife of the aforementioned maternal grandfather) line back to the LaFontaines from France.
One thing that was interesting... there were so many preachers (all flavors) up the branches, on both sides.