# How reliably can ancestry be traced back? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2015, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752 "2015-01-02T07:59:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2015, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/41 "2015-01-03T19:01:42Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Of course, I traced my ancestry based on the existing parish records in England. However, my ancestors were “bloody peasants!” so the record peters out somewhere around 1700, with a few cryptic entries before that. Apparently thanks to Crowell and his ilk, there was no church hierarchy determined to register anyone and everyone or even caring about registration from about 1640 to 1665 and things are pretty spotty before and after. > > I’m not aware of any meaningful, reliable, and relatively complete records outside of those parish registers. And of course, things get confusing in the mid-1800’s when people started moving all over Britain and some birth records, as far as I can tell, did not bother listing parents. > > I can point to ancestors born around 1700, listing parents who are not registered. I can point to births in the same village, same surname, from 1612 or so - grandparent? Sibling of grandparent? But the record gets hazy. > > the other polite term I’ve heard is “pedigree error”. Depending on whose research you believe, the incidence is somewhere between 2% and 10%. > > There’s the apocryphal story of the teacher in England who asked his students to compare blood-types as a biology heredity only to find that X% had blood types incompatible with their listed parents. Of course, how many people in the 1960’s knew their blood type, and even so, what are the odds that a random incorrect “father” would produce a blood type discrepancy? Plus, I’ve never been able to find an original source for that story. > > (Plus, as others have pointed out in discussing this topic, it includes the possibility of adoptions, guardianships, and children from pre-marriage relationships.) We are told our line is Jewish. That is the blue eyed blonde Germanic type of Jewishness. A cousin did the DNA thing and was told for $180 that he had more Neanderthal DNA than actual Jewish DNA! ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/42 "2015-01-03T19:27:20Z")
> [@DingoelGringo](#): > > It is axiomatically correct that there is a 5 % chance that your daddy wasn’t your father. Take that back 20 generations and how big of a chance is there that it is correct? Assuming you tracing yourself through an exclusively male line, about 35%. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2015, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/43 "2015-01-03T20:44:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Overall then, despite some of the objections raised I would say there is a reasonable chance I am descended from this Anglo-Saxon Noble. There is an extremely high chance that you are descended from that Anglo-Saxon noble. The only part that’s really subject to question is whether you’re descended from him via the specific line that you believe you’re descended through. But even if that line doesn’t pan out, it’s likely that several others do. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/44 "2015-01-04T08:40:19Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I didn’t say that. Obviously, whether they are their ‘adoptive parent’s children’ depends entirely on how you define parent, and I’m fine with different definitions in different contexts and for different purposes. In terms of loyalties and loves, a person is probably going to have more loyalties and obligations towards their adoptive parent than their biological one. In terms of most of your specific traits though (physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, physiological) you’re going to resemble your biological parents more than your adopted ones. And when researching genealogy, most people aren’t interested in the origin of their nose, but of their lastname(s). The first is a physical trait, the second is true whether there were or not cuckoos, foundlings, or pregnant unmarried sisters involved. To know my genealogy, I checked the family’s tree as kept by the current “patriarch” on one side (the same one which at one point had to check parochial records and the Anales due to a legal requirement to prove descent from people who’d attended our Parliament several centuries prior), asked relatives on the other. To know where my mitochondries came from, I checked my genes. Different questions require different research methodologies. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/45 "2015-01-04T10:50:29Z")
Conversations about misattributed paternity always feel uncomfortably misogynistic to me. With the rise of DNA testing in genealogy, we should be starting to build up a picture of just how rampant it is, or was, but the sad thing is that when a Y-DNA test proves that the father of record was not the biological father, the mother is instantly assumed to have duped one man into raising another’s child. In reality there are many scenarios of varying likelihood, including the supposed cuckold entering into marriage with the full knowledge that his blushing bride was expecting another man’s child, or grandparents of an illegitimate baby presenting themselves to the world as the child’s parents, or even a childless couple taking on a parentless child without a formal adoption. History rarely records the intimate details of a couple’s secrets, leaving the woman to be assumed to have been promiscuous and deceitful. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/46 "2015-01-04T11:47:54Z")
My paternal line has to been documented to the 11th century in Navarre, Spain. Each step with a baptismal record and there it goes cold ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/47 "2015-01-04T12:34:12Z")
You line might also appear in the [Anales del Reino de Navarra](http://www.euskomedia.org/aunamendi/352), then (don’t have to be “nobility” for that; for some reason people assume that only high nobility would). You may want to check that out if you ever get the chance. I don’t recommend trying to read the whole thing end to end, mind you… it’s a lot of volumes and a lot of it is lists and legal records. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/48 "2015-01-04T20:00:38Z")
**Eliahna** , that’s why terms like “non-paternity event” are used. It’s too jargon to easily take on disparaging connotations, and it encompasses all of those different sorts of circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/49 "2015-01-05T03:59:01Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > You line might also appear in the [Anales del Reino de Navarra](http://www.euskomedia.org/aunamendi/352), then (don’t have to be “nobility” for that; for some reason people assume that only high nobility would). You may want to check that out if you ever get the chance. I don’t recommend trying to read the whole thing end to end, mind you… it’s a lot of volumes and a lot of it is lists and legal records. Gracias, lo buscaré. ---
**Author:** ![upend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b3f665/32.png) [@upend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/upend)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/50 "2015-01-05T13:38:50Z")
if you go back 30 generations - this would give you around a billion great(x28)grandparents to shoot at. OK many many of them will be the same people (actually if you take 25 years as a generation, a billion would be maybe twice the population of the Earth) So anyway, you’re pretty much bound to have some nobility and lots of commoner in your DNA - remember you’re not decended from one strand, you’re decended from all of them! ---
**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/51 "2015-01-05T23:09:12Z")
The reason people tend to focus on aristocratic or royal lines isn’t because they’re thrilled with themselves for having OMG royal blood I am a princess!!! It’s because you can trace aristocracy back further - if one side of your family is all illiterate slum-dwellers, and the other side is royalty, then the slum-dwellers’ trail is likely to run cold within a few generations, while the royals’ could easily go back a thousand years or more. Also, you’re more likely to be able to find info about the aristocrats beyond a birth date in a parish register. If you’re interested in family history, then ‘And in 1378, my multi-great-grandmother Ethel the Lopsided poisoned the king’s first wife in order to make it onto the throne’ is a lot more interesting than ‘My great-grandfather immigrated from somewhere in Russia in 1913, end of story.’ And just to point out, too, non-paternity events go both ways. If you’re thinking purely in terms of bloodline, it’s just as possible that the ‘commoner’ side of your family was in fact aristocratic (some titled guy having an affair with a local girl) as that the ‘aristocratic’ side was actually co-opted by commoners. > [@Eliahna](#): > > Conversations about misattributed paternity always feel uncomfortably misogynistic to me. With the rise of DNA testing in genealogy, we should be starting to build up a picture of just how rampant it is, or was, but the sad thing is that when a Y-DNA test proves that the father of record was not the biological father, the mother is instantly assumed to have duped one man into raising another’s child. In reality there are many scenarios of varying likelihood, including the supposed cuckold entering into marriage with the full knowledge that his blushing bride was expecting another man’s child, or grandparents of an illegitimate baby presenting themselves to the world as the child’s parents, or even a childless couple taking on a parentless child without a formal adoption. History rarely records the intimate details of a couple’s secrets, leaving the woman to be assumed to have been promiscuous and deceitful. Yep. And the scenarios also include rape. Virtuous married women get raped too - and get pregnant from it, regardless of what that cretinous politician said - and a few generations ago, abortion wasn’t an option. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/52 "2015-01-06T00:54:14Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > … > And just to point out, too, non-paternity events go both ways. If you’re thinking purely in terms of bloodline, it’s just as possible that the ‘commoner’ side of your family was in fact aristocratic (some titled guy having an affair with a local girl) as that the ‘aristocratic’ side was actually co-opted by commoners… Good point. There could also have been cases of babies being switched, either intentionally or (more likely) mistakenly. There’s always the theory that if this, in fact, did happen with royalty, the true heir to, say, the British throne could be some homeless guy in Central Park. ---
**Author:** ![Lazy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@Lazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lazy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/53 "2015-01-06T03:18:07Z")
Like several others here, I have managed to find a reasonably well-documented line going way back (through Edward I, in my case). For me, the story is what is interesting, along with the simple fact that it is possible to find a document trail going back that far. Genetically, it is pretty much meaningless, even if the biological paternity matches the documented paternity going all the way back. My line is not an all father-to-son line (obviously), or all mother-to-daughter, so the overwhelming likelihood is that I have inherited nothing genetically meaningful at all along that path. Apparently, 9 or 10 generations back, the chances are that you have inherited no autosomal genomic blocks at all from any particular ancestor, at least according to[this site](http://gcbias.org/2013/11/04/how-much-of-your-genome-do-you-inherit-from-a-particular-ancestor/). (Of course, you got some from some of them.) Getting back to the OP, you might be able to make an argument that you can trace the kings of Dál Riata back a bit further than Arnulf (at least that is what Stewart Baldwin shows at his [project tracing the ancestors of Henry II](http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/at.htm)). Maybe not with quite the same degree of confidence. And the line eventually becomes clearly mythical. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/54 "2015-01-06T05:50:02Z")
Yes, “pedigree error” carries the same non-committal possibility of assorted explanations. However, I will take the opposite tack too - women are probably less likely than men to stray, but the consequences in the ages before birth control (and before in depth widespread knowledge of fertility windows) was much more demonstrable for the woman. Your make ancestors only a generation or two back could as equally likely have additional offspring that nobody else knows about - but women in the same predicament rarely managed to hide the fact. The situation is not a cause for shame or finger-pointing; even in the most heavily sexist, male-dominated society of the bible we see Joseph simply contemplating hiding the details about Mary’s pregnancy rather than shaming her or having her stoned. It’s quite possible that the only place some of these “errors” are hidden from is the propriety of written records, and the family were well aware of the issue about issue. IIRC the king was not shy about recognizing their fairly numerous illegitimate offspring (Fitzroy - son of the king?), usually when the mother was not married. The less important the father, the less likely the recognition carried much weight and so recognition was less important. But even in places where records were kept, it can be difficult. Some parish records were destroyed or lost in fires in England. Social disruptions like protestant revolts, riots, war and plain theft could have also caused holes in the record. I read somewhere the entire 1930 British census was destroyed in a warehouse fire. IIRC the English crown did not decree registration of births, deaths, and marriages until 1537(?) and as mentioned, that was spotty at best with a big hole around the Cromwell regime. Similarly, the literacy of some parish priests was questionable, spelling was optional and trying to match together names like Robert, Rob, and Robt can be a challenge. It must be amazing to have somewhat reliable records going back a millennia, especially in a land where I assume “you spell it the way it sounds” with less ambiguity. ---
**Author:** ![Lazy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@Lazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lazy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/55 "2015-01-06T12:18:10Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > It must be amazing to have somewhat reliable records going back a millennia, especially in a land where I assume “you spell it the way it sounds” with less ambiguity. It it not quite so amazing when you get into a line that owned a lot of land, held government positions, and so on. The number and variety of surviving records leave much less ambiguity. (And prior to the 1500s, you are mainly dealing with Latin, not English, so the spelling is not so much the issue, although the Latinizing of English names was not always very consistent.) That is not to say that there aren’t still often uncertainties in such situations, but the farther back you go, the more likely it is that experts will already have spent some time piecing things together. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/56 "2015-01-06T12:35:39Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I read somewhere the entire 1930 British census was destroyed in a warehouse fire. It was the 1931 census. The [1890 U.S. census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_Census) data was almost completely lost to fire. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Holdsworth\_Effect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/848f3c/32.png) [@The\_Holdsworth\_Effect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Holdsworth_Effect)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752/57 "2015-01-06T13:40:54Z")
While the geneology sites lead me back many generations, some are definitely more reliable than others- so I’m only completely certain about those generations with whom I had contact, and their grandparents. There was a non-paternity event in my mother’s side- one of her cousins was born 14 months after his “father’s” death and much later was tacitly admitted to have been sired by his “uncle”. Not much of a blip as genes go. Lot of family muttering, though;). Mom’s two ancestral lines were both Pilgrim, and peasant, no royalties I can find, and those are the ones that can get back to pre 1500 England. The Irish and German (again, peasant) paternal line for me is very limited in terms of solid documentation. An Italian once told me (my maiden name is Irish) that his ancestors had indoor plumbing and heated floors while mine were jumping around in the weeds painted blue 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-reliably-can-ancestry-be-traced-back/708752.md?page=2)