What can we learn?

I have been searching for my husbands family and information about them on the popular genealogy sites. I have had some really good finds! - not information on them specifically but the tidbits that i can glean have sent me on research projects. I found out about Fitchs' Home for the Soldier and their Ophrans established in Darien ,CT. An Ancestor spend the last ten years of his life there. And i found out that Nova Scotia has a lot of coal mining towns and have been mining there since 1650's or so. It is true, in my personal case, that we can learn from the past.