# What's the farthest back anyone has traced their genealogy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 12, 2005, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318 "2005-01-12T02:29:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/121 "2012-06-21T15:23:28Z")
> [@glaeken](#): > > A guy on a UK genealogy program (Matthew Pinsent on who do you think you are) traced his decadency from William the Conqueror. Which if you can do brings up the fact that William the Conqueror had his own genealogy chart saying he descended from God. So effectively he traced his genealogy back to being descended from God. That will take some beating. Being able to trace one’s descent into porn and liquor back that far is quite a feat, but I don’t think W the C was all that decadent. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/122 "2012-06-21T15:45:29Z")
> [@babyboomer1001](#): > > I am back to the year 286 in one line. I have a lot more research to do. I also have a lot of royalty and sirs and lords some barons etc. Oh -and two saints so far. Several sir lord mayors of London and a couple of high sheriffs. I hope I live long enough to finish my research and present binders to my family. I think I will put it all in a book format. Please forgive the bad grammer. The Kindle Fire doesn’t have a comma and one finger typing is a nuisance. No comma? What’s the world comma to? 🙂 Seriously, I am curious if any of your research results came from a genealogy search service? Especially if they solicited you? Some of those are not reliable, and do little more than roughly match names. If you had a Roger Smith in your tree, there’s no guarantee that they will connect to the right Roger Smith of the thousands that might show up in a computer search. I’m just suggesting that you need to be a little skeptical if it seems too easy! ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/123 "2012-06-21T16:10:04Z")
@Chefguy I see I fall prey to the dreaded spell checker once again 😃 ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/124 "2012-06-21T16:15:43Z")
I personally have been able to trace mine back to 1600, when an maternal ancestor was actually born at sea on the voyage from Europe (Germany) to America. When I visited the town in England my other maternal ancestors came from, the vicar took a quick look at the record books and said they were mentioned in the Domesday Book. On my dad’s side, I’ve gotten as far back as the mid-19th century in Austria-Hungary. ---
**Author:** ![pdunderhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@pdunderhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pdunderhill)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/125 "2012-06-21T16:23:54Z")
About 15,000 years since you ask! I worked on a teaser programme for the BBC that asked residents of Ebbor Gorge in Somerset in England to compare their DNA with that recovered from Human remains Carbon Dated at 14-15 thousand years BCE. A match was found so I think I can claim ancestory with Ug or maybe is was Mitochondrial DNA so OG. Quiet grunts, Peter PS I’m related to John Underhill, Captain of the Speedwell who singurlarly failed to follow the Mayflower to the Colonies! ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/126 "2012-06-21T16:24:16Z")
I’ve jumped the pond on both sides of the family, but things come to a pretty abrupt halt around the 12th century. The one line ties to some royals, which means lineage can be traced beyond that across the channel to the Burgundy line and De Spencer, but I don’t trust the connection, and just don’t have the energy to chase it down. On the German side, the lineage ran out of gas in the 1700s in Prussia. There are only church records and they just don’t go any further than that for peasantry. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/127 "2012-06-21T16:36:00Z")
Pfft. Beyond a couple of generations, **all** genealogies are wishful thinking. We know, nowadays, since we can check DNA, that passing off children onto a husband that didn’t father them is very common. I see no reason to believe that it was any less common in the olden days. Another thing that’s always been common is undocumented adoption. Your brother and his wife die of the plague, but their son survives? Adopt him. Another set of hands to help out on the farm. Raise him as your own, same name, as far as any records can tell he _is_ your son. Who was his biological mother? Who knows? You had a baby out of wedlock when you were 14? Your mother adopts her and she’s raised as your sister, and according to all the records, that’s what she is. Who was her biological father? Who knows? That sort of thing happened in families _all the time_. It happened in _every_ family. It certainly happened in mine, and I am 100% certain it happened in _yours_, too. Beyond a couple of generations, beyond living memory, **all** genealogies are wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/128 "2012-06-21T17:18:01Z")
Indeed, one of my grandmothers was born well after the rest of her siblings, and her oldest sister would have been 16ish at the time of her birth. Haven’t dug too deeply into this but I have a sneaky suspicion my great-aunt was actually my great-grandmother, but I’ve kept this suspicion to myself. I feel pretty accomplished that I have a JPG of the 1850 census page with my 2 year old great-great-grandfather who carries my family’s name. Beyond that, I’d have to wade into the records of one of the more minor German Confederation principalities to dig any deeper for that side of the family. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/129 "2012-06-21T17:21:37Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > Pfft. Beyond a couple of generations, **all** genealogies are wishful thinking. > > We know, nowadays, since we can check DNA, that passing off children onto a husband that didn’t father them is very common. I see no reason to believe that it was any less common in the olden days. > > Another thing that’s always been common is undocumented adoption. Your brother and his wife die of the plague, but their son survives? Adopt him. Another set of hands to help out on the farm. Raise him as your own, same name, as far as any records can tell he _is_ your son. Who was his biological mother? Who knows? > > You had a baby out of wedlock when you were 14? Your mother adopts her and she’s raised as your sister, and according to all the records, that’s what she is. Who was her biological father? Who knows? > > That sort of thing happened in families _all the time_. It happened in _every_ family. It certainly happened in mine, and I am 100% certain it happened in _yours_, too. > > Beyond a couple of generations, beyond living memory, **all** genealogies are wishful thinking. Perhaps, but I think you’re being a bit too dismissive. Verifiable sources are critical. The importance of things like birth certificates and marriage certs can’t be stressed enough. Accepting anything at face value in genealogy research is to negate the entire line. If the documentation is there, it’s reasonable to accept that the family connection exists. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/130 "2012-06-21T20:42:07Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > Pfft. Beyond a couple of generations, **all** genealogies are wishful thinking. Genealogists, amateur and professional are not stupid. They are well aware of this. They are therefore only researching links between people as they were reported by those people. If A and B thought of themselves as parent and child, then that’s what we go with. You can do no more or no less. There are official adoptions all over family trees and those are noted and the people keep researching parentage. The ancestors didn’t care about genes, so why should we? There are several instances in royal families when an heir was almost certainly not the child of the king but was considered the official heir anyway. If it’s good enough for royalty, it’s good enough for us peons. ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/131 "2012-06-21T21:12:39Z")
My paternal grandmother, who was interested in that sort of thing, had all sorts of information on her husband’s family back to four brothers from a Mennonite community in the Rhineland who pulled up stakes for Penn’s Colony in America in 1683 – they were among the founders of Germantown, PA. All of the family of that name are descended from the one brother who had children. He had a batch, going through three of four wives in the process. The descendants cut a wide swath in colonial Pennsylvania and the opening of the Northwest Territory. Before 1683 there is pretty much nothing but they were humble people. The family seems to have died out in Europe. When my wife and I lived in Germany we made a habit of checking the local phone book. Every one of the name we found were Americans . Grand ’ma family came to Canada after the last Jacobite rising in Scotland and during the Highland Clearances that followed. Again, humble people, probably illiterate and Gallic speaking. No record or stories before Canada. My mother’s people came over from Germany and Switzerland in the mid-19th Century and there is little known about where they came from. The first immigrants were such monumental figures that the lack of a family history doesn’t make much difference. When you can point to a guy who came over as a 14 year old and sold out to Borden before he was 50 and retired to write Swiss dialect poetry, paint pictures and uphold the standard of Fighting Bob Lafollette for the next 40 years you don’t have to look back any further to have a sense of pride of family. ---
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/132 "2012-06-21T23:25:48Z")
A number of villages in China can trace the lineage of pretty much everyone in the village (patrilineal, anyway) back at least 1,000 years. It wouldn’t surprise me if some African royalty, like the Ethiopian royal family, can trace farther back than almost anyone. I would also guess that some Hindu Brahmins can trace back quite a ways as well. They’ve been literate record-keepers with great pride in their lineage for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/133 "2012-06-22T05:42:20Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Genealogists, amateur and professional are not stupid. They are well aware of this. They are therefore only researching links between people as they were reported by those people. If A and B thought of themselves as parent and child, then that’s what we go with. You can do no more or no less. > > There are official adoptions all over family trees and those are noted and the people keep researching parentage. The ancestors didn’t care about genes, so why should we? > > There are several instances in royal families when an heir was almost certainly not the child of the king but was considered the official heir anyway. If it’s good enough for royalty, it’s good enough for us peons. Well, yes and no. We can often figure out who we inherited our names from. Whether we are actual genetic descendants of those people is entirely another question. Now, in terms of inheritance, that’s fine. In terms of an adopted person being just as much a “real” child of his/her adoptive parents, yes, I fully agree. But in terms of an actual blood relationship to people of earlier centuries, that’s unprovable at this distance, unless you can come up with viable DNA samples from the people you’re claiming descent from. Why should we worry about genes? Because people in this thread certainly seem to me to be assuming that they are _actual genetic descendants_ of the people whose names they have traced. I’m saying that it becomes more likely with every generation back that there was a cuckoo or two in the family tree. Once you’re up into 32 and 64 and 128 ancestors, I’d say it’s _certain_ that at least a few of them weren’t who the records say they were. Which is fine and dandy, but don’t tell me you’re descended from some guy you’ve traced back to the 12th century, because there is very little chance you actually are, whatever the records say. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/134 "2012-06-22T06:05:53Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > Which is fine and dandy, but don’t tell me you’re descended from some guy you’ve traced back to the 12th century, because there is very little chance you actually are, whatever the records say. Actually, mathematically, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be genetically descended from this person. Saying that you’re a descendant of Charlemagne is a trivial statement because everyone with European blood is. What genealogists are interested in, generally, are family _stories_; a complete line of descent is the backbone of such a story and that’s why it matters. It’s a chain of closely related people, even if the relation isn’t always genetic, it’s always a _meaningful_ relationship. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/135 "2012-06-22T07:01:07Z")
> [@Cunctator](#): > > Royalty and aristocracy probably have the best chance of tracing their genealogy back the farthest because they’ve traditionally ruled and owned land, thus requiring that good family records be kept for inheritance purposes. Queen Elizabeth would be able to trace her geneaology back to at least the Norman kings, if not farther. Some of those families have set up genealogical websites about themselves, and they’re not difficult to find, at least in the local language. For instance, there’s this site about the Welf family (maybe more familiar as Guelph). Obviously, Charlemagne is one of the genealogical landmarks here, and if you can trace your line back to him you automatically get to go about 200 years further back, since his ancestors are known. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/136 "2012-06-22T07:04:45Z")
> [@jovan](#): > > Actually, mathematically, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be genetically descended from this person. Saying that you’re a descendant of Charlemagne is a trivial statement because everyone with European blood is. That may be true, but merely knowing you are descended from the big guy by statistical near-certainty is a far cry from being able to cite the actual names of people in the line of descent, in which case, beyond a certain number of years back, they will all be locally important dukes or counts or whatnot, significant in the history of that time and place. Granted, all that, per se, is of equally little consequence in most of the world today, but it usually is important to those interested in researching this stuff. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/137 "2012-06-22T07:13:11Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > That may be true, but merely knowing you are descended from the big guy by statistical near-certainty is a far cry from being able to cite the actual names of people in the line of descent, in which case, beyond a certain number of years back, they will all be locally important dukes or counts or whatnot, significant in the history of that time and place. Granted, all that, per se, is of equally little consequence in most of the world today, but it usually is important to those interested in researching this stuff. That’s precisely what I said. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/138 "2012-06-22T08:20:11Z")
> [@jovan](#): > > Actually, mathematically, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be genetically descended from this person. Saying that you’re a descendant of Charlemagne is a trivial statement because everyone with European blood is. No, that’s wrong on two counts. First, it is far **far** more likely that the bloodline of anyone that lived in the 12th century Europe has gone extinct than that it has become the ancestor of everyone of European descent. Almost everyone who was alive in the year 1200 has **no living descendants**. However (and secondly), the idea that everyone of European descent is definitely a descendant of Charlemagne is just as likely to be nonsense. For example, my ancestors were Irish and Scottish peasants. While it’s _possible_ that some taint of Frankish royalty reached even those distant peoples, I regard it as _highly_ unlikely. Personally, I see no reason to doubt that my personal ancestors were mostly Celt with a touch of Viking all the way back to prehistory. If you want to claim that Charlemagne is ancestral to all modern _French_ people, maybe. But I would bet my life savings that there were populations in places like Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Baltic region, etc, that **never** had any significant genetic mixing with southern/central Europeans between prehistory and now, and that there are _many_ people of entirely European ancestry who have **no** Frankish ancestry. Can I prove it? No. Can you prove that Charlemagne is an ancestor of mine? No. But I do not believe that the statistics that claim to “prove” that I do are valid. There is a **big** difference between “statistically probable” and “proven”. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/139 "2012-06-22T10:57:00Z")
I’m a genealogy hobbyist and these questions interest me. It’s certainly true that there has been some undocumented cuckolding during human history ( 🆒 ) and there are other reasons why lineages can be suspect. Some of the inferences made by experts are impressive. To give just one example [one expert deduced the identity of the wife of Ralph Basset of Drayton based on a commemorative brass for her grandnephew!](http://groups.google.com/group/soc.genealogy.medieval/msg/b14556d650af683d) ! > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > That may be true, but merely knowing you are descended from the big guy by statistical near-certainty is a far cry from being able to cite the actual names of people in the line of descent, in which case, beyond a certain number of years back, they will all be locally important dukes or counts or whatnot … The portions of my pedigree which pass expert scrutiny contain not a single King from the past thousand years! ☹ Yet, I do have an expert-sanctioned line that does extend all the way back to Charlemagne ! > [@Shakester](#): > > However (and secondly), the idea that everyone of European descent is definitely a descendant of Charlemagne is just as likely to be nonsense. … Can you prove that Charlemagne is an ancestor of mine? No. But I do not believe that the statistics that claim to “prove” that I do are valid. There is a **big** difference between “statistically probable” and “proven”. I agree that “statistically probable” and “proven” are not the same. But it does not follow that the claim is nonsense. It is almost certain that everyone with Central Asian ancestry is descended from Genghis Khan, who is 400 years more recent than Charlemagne. In another thread, opinion converged that everyone in the most remote Amazon village had blood from post-Columbian Europe. These statistical inferences are startling, but valid. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318/140 "2012-06-22T13:41:04Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > If you want to claim that Charlemagne is ancestral to all modern _French_ people, maybe. But I would bet my life savings that there were populations in places like Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Baltic region, etc, that **never** had any significant genetic mixing with southern/central Europeans between prehistory and now You don’t need significant genetic mixing. You don’t even need a single German person to have ever met a single Irish person (although, of course, they did). You just need sufficient generations for diffusion to take place through the population. For example a German person may have been ancestral to an English person who moved to Ireland, and may have had children there who figure in the family trees of all of us Irish. There are no isolated populations - if the Irish or Scottish person has even a single English ancestor (and of course all do), the idea of isolation falls away. As for the Baltic region, there has been direct contact with Germans since the time of the Teutonic knights. I think common sense fails us because so often common ancestors are spoken of in terms of famous historical figures like Genghis Khan and Charlemagne. It’s misleading, because most of our (your and my) many, many common ancestors are just long-forgotten people who led ordinary lives and moved only short distances. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-farthest-back-anyone-has-traced-their-genealogy/284318.md?page=8)