If you ever plan to visit this region for research, try to get to Kaiserslautern, less than an hour southwest of Frankfurt.
I don't know where exactly (which village) your ancestors started from here, but this will be the town where you will have no trouble getting started as everyone here is able to speak English and a lot of US citizens living here (due to the Ramstein AFB 5 minutes away).
And if you want to practice standard german, this will be the perfect middle ground to get to know dialect speakers who also are able to communicate in standard high german and are comfortable with english.
I don't know where exactly (which village) your ancestors started from here, but this will be the town where you will have no trouble getting started as everyone here is able to speak English and a lot of US citizens living here (due to the Ramstein AFB 5 minutes away).
And if you want to practice standard german, this will be the perfect middle ground to get to know dialect speakers who also are able to communicate in standard high german and are comfortable with english.