One dress is for the good wife, two are for the vain woman, and three are for the harlot. If a man marries a wife with two dresses he must find his own dinner in the pot. The young fellows now are a lot of lazy ones and they will live to be sorry. These quotes came from 1928, not 1998. Some genealogists are fortunate enough to have had first-hand access to their immigrant forebears, assuming they were interested in genealogy at the time.
Some genealogists are fortunate enough to have material written by their ancestors.
Genealogists with no personal knowledge of their immigrant ancestors are left with second-hand stories of the old country. Some genealogists do not even have that much. Sometimes non-genealogical articles can provide some information about your ancestor's ethnic group, or the area in which they settled. While your ancestor will probably not be mentioned, the background information may be helpful and perhaps the footnotes and bibliography will lead to other sources of information. I am one-half Ostfriesen by ancestry.