How far back in the family tree can you go?

[Kaleva]

It's the mid-1700's for me. Russian troops came thru the town and burned it to the ground; including the church were the birth, marriage and death records were kept. So all records prior to that time were lost. One of my great-grandmothers on my mother's side told me when she was young and still living in the home country, she and everyone else fled into the woods when Russian troops arrived and burned down her town.

[proteus_lives]

1. Same here.

About the 1750s. My father's family, they came from Scotland to Virginia. My mother's family is unknown until the 1840s, when they came over from France.

[Captain Boomerang]

2. You're a Volga German?

Catherine the Great's Russia was not that great.
Russians never burnt anything they didn't already have a copy of.
Russians kept records of EVERYTHING!
If you are a Volga, then your info may be in Saratov (sometimes spelled Saratof.)

[Kaleva]

4. Finn

[Captain Boomerang]

6. Once you start digging for info, things will pop up over there.

Your info could be in St. Petersburg... Depends on where and what church was destroyed.

I have relatives from Dreispitz and Neidermonjou... If they didn't have a problem with the Russians, it was the Cossacks. There are a lot of stories about churches getting burnt to the ground (Lutheran etc...) However, the military collected information on everybody and everything before destroying something (Not like the American revolution.)

You might contact a historian of that area your family is from if you want to find more info. (Sometimes it is online.)

[Bennyboy]

3. Moms side to the 1200's or so... But My Dad's, only to him...

Mom was from Scottish aristocracy. Even have an ancestral castle there. McLeod.

My dad was a bastard (No a real one too) and he never cared to find his real father.

[Captain Boomerang]

5. 1100's ...Mother side from Herstmonceux

Some of my family members were beheaded for political reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herstmonceux_Castle

[carlyhippy]

7. 1700's England and 1600's Spain

I thankfully had others studying my same family names, and I guess they did all the work, I just had to hook my past 3-4 generations to theirs.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. Only from the time that they arrived in the US...

That's only 1912 for my maternal grandparents from Poland, mid/late 1800s for my paternal great grandparents from Ireland, but mid 1600s for my paternal grandmother's Dutch ancestors. There's a book on them which was commissioned by my grandmother's aunt, and I'm even in it... :)

You might be interested in this DU group. Another DUer and I started it in 2005. :hi:

DU Ancestry/Genealogy Group
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=331

[Kali]

9. east Africa

Ardipithecus

[pokerfan]

10. 16th century Germany

on my father's mother's side.

[HopeHoops]

11. ~1750 - and ironically, about 12 miles from where I live now.

My mom discovered the link a couple years after I moved into this area. Weird, eh?

[justabob]

12. pretty far

I feel fairly confident of the history back to the late 1600's. Mom's family landed in MD around 1685. They landed in MD and migrated south through Virginia and Georgia where they did their part for the Patriots during the Revolution. The line splits again and my branch came on to Texas in the early 1800s. They did the whole Texas Revolution/Republic of Texas thing, statehood and then suited up again in Gray when that time came. We are still here.

Before that I have less faith in the tree, but mom has traced it way back through the Middle Ages. Apparently our family was the shit back then.... not so much now. :) I have no idea, but supposedly some of our people were with William when he came across the channel in 1066, and then went on to became some of the "rebel" barons that got so put out by King John that the Magna Carta came about. It goes back further, but I just can't believe the records are good enough to accurately trace that far back.... even in the British aristocracy.

[warrior1]

13. Haplogroup U5

This group is around 50,000 years old.

[hunter]

14. Many of my ancestors simply showed up in the 1800's without documents.

I'm guessing that's the way they wanted it -- ship jumpers, draft dodgers, and runaway wives

[jah the baptist]

15. late 1700s

7th great paternal grandad came from ireland right after american revolution when migration resumed

eventually would like to go there and trace it back farther

[guitar man]

16. Early 1600s

My dad's family landed in Jamestown and Mom's at Plymouth . My most notable ancestor is William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

[LiberalEsto]

17. Estonian here

I can't go very far back. My parents immigrated to the US in the late 40s from a displaced persons camp in Germany after fleeing Estonia. My mother was an only child and died when I was 23, long before I got interested in family history. On her side, I know the names of her four grandparents. Because her father's father was a professor at Tartu University in Estonia in the late 19th Century, I was able to obtain some biographical material from the university. I learned the name of his father, and found out he had seven children. I had no idea that I had a great-aunt from this family still alive as recently as 1976, since my mother never spoke about her father's family. I've been unable to trace my mother's other grandparents' families.

My only first cousin, who lives in Estonia, put together a family tree of my late father's family, but it only went back to the mid-1800s in a few places. When I visited her a few years ago, she told me that my father had done a large amount of geneaological research in his 20s and had even traced one ancestress to Sweden. (My father and I did not get along). Then he had to flee the Germans and left Estonia. The Russians invaded, kicked his father and sister out of the family home, and occupied it for several months, destroying everything inside including all my father's research. Drat those Russians. What did they have against family history?

[Turbineguy]

18. 811.

But there's a gap to just before the Battle of Hastings.

[MorningGlow]

19. Not far at all

Just to my great-grandmother on my mother's side (haven't tried very hard to trace my dad's side)--my mother's paternal grandmother made up her last name when she came to America and all her kids were illegitimate, so we can't trace their paternity (we only have the rich dude's nickname--the guy she left behind in Italy--not his real name). O the scandal! :evilgrin:

[hippywife]

20. Just my paternal great-grands on my grandmother's side.

They came here from Italy, in the first decade of the 1900's, I believe. His last name was Esposito so there is only so far one can go with that, anyway, since that indicates that someone was an orphan. Found out a few years ago that they never married until after all of their children were born since she was still married to someone else and separated from him all that time, so I've no idea if she ever had her previous marriage annulled or what her maiden name was, to us she was always Esposito.

My paternal great-grands on my grandfather's side, I know nothing about since they died very early in my life, she before I was born, I think even when my dad was a child. I was almost named Fidela, after her. They were also Italian immigrants of the same era.

[The Midway Rebel]

21. Why bother?

In my case, ain't nothing up there but buncha' of nuts and squirrels.



:+

[nickinSTL]

22. my direct paternal line

the 17th century - because all the church records in much of Germany was lost during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)

another line, from one of my dad's other lines, we can trace WAY back to the first kings of Norway and Scotland.

And another line can be traced back to a Breton knight who invaded England with William the Conqueror in 1066.

[frogmarch]

23. late 1500s, England, for me, although

one of my great-great grandmother's ancestry has been traced back to Charlemagne and William the Conqueror. I don't know accurate that genealogy really is. Another great-grandmother's ancestors was supposedly Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony) but I knew that was bogus when I saw his granddaughter Genvissa named as an ancestor of mine too. She was supposedly a daughter of Antony's son the emperor Claudius. Problem is, Genvissa is believed by many historians to have been mythical - she never really existed.

Edited to include this bit of info on my 7th great grandfather, Symon Tuttle, who emigrated to New England from old England in 1632 on the ship Planter with his parents and siblings. As an adult he was one of the early colonists who were fed up with being taxed by England but having no say in the colonial government. He was ready to fight the Revolutionary War a century before it actually happened. He was imprisoned for speaking out against English rule and made to pay a stiff fine.

This page is from the Essex Co., Massachusetts court records of 1664. The bit about Symon is on the last half of the page.

[unpossibles]

24. on my dad's side, surprisingly far back - to the 1500s

Not sure about my mom's side - to my knowledge no one has investigated it. On dad's side, we can trace back to Thomas Ligon (1586-1674) & Mary Harris (1625-1704), whose descendant Martha Ligon (1780-1854) married Caleb Hall (1775-1861), whose daughter married into Charles Crutchfield Young (descendant of Francois Cadet & Marie Martha Legros who died in 1712 and 1742 respectively). From there you have the Mortons who married into the McPhersons who married into the Schlotman branch.

It's pretty fascinating stuff. A distant cousin of mine and a cousin of my dad's (two different people) have been doing a lot of work on our genealogy the past decade or longer. We're quite the mutts, more than we realized, but it's interesting that the oldest known branches are French.

There are some cool names in my family too - my grandma was named "Dicie" and a great uncle named "Stylie Fred Edwards". Also of note, it seems a lot of people lived to a rather old age or died quite young. It's either 80-90 or you die at 30-40 in my family with few in between.

[bikebloke]

25. Mid 1600's.

Along the direct paternal line, he came over from Scotland as an indentured servant. Before that via Y-DNA, with the Norman Celtic invasion of 1066. And about 7,000 years ago from the Caucasus. Up from Africa before that.

As for the maternal line, those people aren't nice, so I'm not going to bother researching them.

[BuddhaGirl]

26. on my mother's side, back to the Mayflower, through

one of my 6th great grandfathers, William Williams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A 7th g-grandfather was Jonathan Trumbull, the Revolutionary War era governor of Connecticut.

I have yet to make a trip to Lebanon, CT to see where this branch of the family was from.

[applegrove]

27. By 'borrowing' somebody elses tree I can go as far back as the 1500s.

Mostly though I can go back to the turn of the 19th century or a bit earlier.

[City of Mills]

28. Around the mid 1600s or so - Nicolas Arendanki

Chief of the Huron Bear clan, father to my first american ancestor (she married my direct ancestor from France).

[annabanana]

29. Eight greats back in the US

A little farther over the pond...

[madinmaryland]

30. Year 1 AD. Jesus!

:rofl:

Actually, 1609 in Germany. I have unsubstantiated information taking me back to the early 1400's.

[lazarus]

31. I'm double checking

but it's pre-Norman invasion, for sure. I think I have a line going back to about 500 CE.

[Haole Girl]

32. All the way back to Eric the Red, on my mother's side (supposedly)

Ironically, only 2 generations on my father's side.

[Lifelong Protester]

33. On maternal side, to 17th century Quebec

they were actually among the ten 'gran famille' to settle Quebec in the 1600s.

On Dad's side, to 1743, when they left Germany for Philadelphia. He was a clockmaker. His nine kids served in the American Revolution, and most all of those guys made it through Valley Forge.


What is really weird in studying ancestors is finding that your families may have crossed paths with ancestors of friends you have now. My good friend had a (several)great grandmother who was killed in a raid in NY during the revolution, when the British were recruiting Native Americans to their side to act as war parties. Turns out the same group that visited and killed my friend's G-Grandmother, also had visited and burned out the farm of my G-grandmother, only in PA, on the way to NY.

[csziggy]

34. My Dad typed up a line of descent that goes back to Odin

One of the family branches is supposed to go through an illegitimate daughter of Henry I, through him to William the Conqueror and through him to the kings of the Norse who traced back to Odin.

Problem is that was taken from a family history written in the late 1800s that is probably wrong. Sure, the family can be traced back to a Baron that helped William conquer England, but there is no historical info that confirms the illegitimate daughter.

We've got a number of branches that go back to the 15th or 14th centuries, but again many were taken from family histories concocted back in the late 1800s.

For real verified proof, we can take some families back to the Huguenot flight from Europe in the 1600 and 1700s. In this country I am trying to confirm the lines back to when they immigrated then will try to trace them overseas.

I have a big advantage in doing genealogy - my grandmother started researching back around 1900. Some of her family members were interested in researching family history at least a generation before that. On my mother's side, she began researching in the fifties and interviewed her very long lived relatives to get their oral histories. So I am already 100-150 years ahead of many people on tracing family lines!

[JCMach1]

35. Jamestown... one of my ancestors was actually a bodyguard for Pocahontas

*cue* the Whitney Houston

[old mark]

36. Mom's euro side came here in the 1630's, bought land from William Penn's son...

there are also some Osage relatives who were here already.

My other grandmother and dad came here from Germany in 1920, don't have much about them, but she was from Austria in the Burgenland near Gratz...she went to college in the early 1900's and was a nurse-midwife. My German grandpa was a Corporal in the Imperial German Army, died in 1918 in WWI.
Don't know much more about them at all...

mark

[AsahinaKimi]

37. Pretty far back ..1700's?

Edo period. Here are some family treasures.
http://twitpic.com/14wmq4

[lukasahero]

38. 1636 on my dad's side

1930's on my mom's. :shrug:

[Minimus]

39. Descendant of Mary Chilton and John Winslow

she arrived on the Mayflower and he came to America on the Fortune. They married between 1623 - 1627.

That is as back far as my family has searched. Maybe someday I will research the Chiltons and the Winslows in England.

[ceile]

40. 1550s Scotland

My maternal grandfather traced his line back to some Scottish earl in the 1550s or 1560s. He did part of my grandmother's tree as well - 1880s Ireland.
My paternal grandmother is German (born here in TX, but didn't speak English until she started school) and her roots go back to 1880s Bavaria. The German side of the family is so huge that we tend to concentrate more on the family after they arrived in the US (my grandmother was one of 9, her mother one of 6, her father one of 5 kids....)

[elfrangel]

41. No dates, just know who. LOL

On my dad's side, I am descended from a Cherokee Indian "Princess" such as it was. We found her to the Trail of Tears, then, nothing.

On my mom's side, we have a lot of stories, not a lot of it can be authenticated. One of the favorites is that we come from an Old West Gunslinger whose lady love told him that if he didn't hang up his guns, she wouldn't marry him. Best we can tell, because I'm here, is that he hung up his guns, married the girl, moved & changed his name. Another one says that one of my ancestors was driving through a farm area, saw a farmer's daughter, went to her dad and said..."I want her". They were married & she loaded up in his wagon and they traveled off in the sunset. LOL....once again, nothing we can prove.

I find the anecdotes more fun than the actual history.

OH! There's another story, authenticated, that a man in England had 3 sons who all came to America, one each year for 3 years. The Oldest made it to shore, and settled. The Middle son made it safely and waited a year for the younger sibling to arrive. As the pair made their way West, they were attacked by Indians and the youngest was killed. The remaining son continued & settled. One of these brothers is an ancestor to President Obama. The other is an ancestor to my family line. My parents found all this out right before the election & were "horrified" by the idea (They are both uber Republican). I love it! We're all related at some point that far back in history. :)

[lizziegrace]

42. 1694 - New Amsterdam

Same couple I'm a descendant of is also responsible for General Daniel Sickles. Look him up. He was, well, nuts.