My advice is to contact the oldest living relative on the side you're tracing and get all the information you can, then work backward using birth records, Bible listings, etc., which will give you information to use in finding your family in the census records.  When you find them in the census records, it will usually tell you where the person was born, and then you work backward from there.  Feel free to contact me for more help. Perhaps if I know more about the information you have, I can direct you to the best place to find more, and also give you some helpful websites.