Teaching History through Genealogy

Has anyone out there used Genealogy as a teaching tool to get students turned on to history? In my U.S History classes I often use stories from my own ancestors to make history more real to my students. It is interesting to trace the life and death struggles of real people in the early U.S. , especially if the students actually have a connection to them. If you can help students trace their own roots back to a time, say in the mid-1800's and follow the life of one of their ancestors through census records, marraige records, death records, etc., it brings history to life for them. As we talk about migration patterns in the class, I tell my students about how my ancestors ended up in New Mexico by tracing their migration from Pennsylvania and Ohio to Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and finally New Mexico. As I read the old newspaper clipping of how my gggrandfather was killed as a train engineer in a head-on collision with another train, they are fascinated. If all they do is learn about the lives of their own grandparents and great-grandparents they will learn about historic events through the stories that their living relatives can tell. The possibilities are endless.