Thanks Polycarp. The addition of *collateral * makes sense. I didn’t see how I could be a descendant (in its strict sense) of my great-uncle.
We own a book that traces my mother’s family back to 1663, when the first Hamel came to New France, aka Canada. But I guess it would be possible to get data of his ancestry if I was to go to Normandy/France.
On my parental side, apparently some distanct cousin(with the same last name and we’re all apparently decended from one guy who landed back in the 1700’s) has traced our line back to 17th century Germany. But I haven’t been able to find anything that goes beyond that.
My Maternal ancestors aren’t much better, but apparently on that side I’m related to Ethan Allen and the Adams Family(John and John Q). One of them is direct, but I forget which. I’ve heard something about some ancestor on the mayflower, but I have no idea if that’s true or not.
But once again, it seems the trail goes cold once we get to Europe. The best I’ve been able to catch is just where they’re intially from and then I can’t find anything farther back. So beyond that, I’m a euro-mutt. Scotch(Don’t mind if I do, thanks), Irish, English, French, Dutch(Some brach called Van Kirk), and a whole big Chunk of German. So a nice spread over NW Europe, but that tells me nothing about who the people in the Old countries were decended from.
I’ve been wanting to ask some Dopers if anyone here has done mt-DNA or Y-chromosome analysis to discover unknown ancestry. I would think people in this thread that had done so would have reported it, but I see little mention of it. I was hoping to get a recommendation for a testing company.
From my reading it seems that one type of testing is done if you have people you suspect might be related to you and you want to construct a recent family tree, and another type is done if you want to know more distant ancestry. Is this correct? It is the latter that I am interested in.
Has anyone done it?
I would love to have DNA testing done for ancestry–there’s actually a surname project for the line I’m interested in (Mustard). Unfortunately, it’s on my mother’s side, and as I understand it, it has to be the paternal line. It’s all very confusing to me. So if there are any Mustards on the SDMB, and they can link the Delaware line to any of the others (possibly from Scotland), for god’s sake, let me know. I’ve hit a wall.
I can trace some ancestry back to 1515 in Germany. General Custer is my fourth cousin, five times removed, or something equally distant. Ah, infamy.
Mitochondrial DNA is straight female inheritance – hence the “Mitochondrial Eve” concept that was such a big issue in human-evolution circles a few years back. Unfortunately, mtDNA doesn’t vary enough to do lineages, just major population groups.
Milton Bradley did some research into the Mustard line, but found that the progenitor ran off with a Miss Scarlett after the Boddy inheritance scandal – apparently the detectives were closing in on him! 
A man gets his Y chromosone from his father, and subsequently will pass it down to any sons he might have (women don’t have Y chromosones at all, barring a few rare genetic anomolies). Since this is the same way in which surnames are passed down in most European cultures, a particular Y could be associated with a particular surname. There are flaws in this correspondance, of course: A man might not, for various reasons (illegitimacy, adoption, noteriety, etc.) bear the same name as his biological father, and many common names have multiple independant origins (the blacksmiths in two different towns might not have been particularly related to each other). Also, while Y analysis can in principle tell you what your last name “should” be, it can’t tell you what your descent is from that family. So, for instance, the Y chromosone evidence tells us that Sally Hemmings’ children were Jeffersons, but it doesn’t prove that the father was Thomas (as opposed to one of his brothers or father).
Mitochondrial DNA evidence works similarly, but on the female line. Mitochondria are effectively separate organisms which live inside of all of our cells, and all of the mitochondria in your body are decended from the mitochondria in the egg cell that got fertilized and developed into you (sperm cells are much more “stripped down”, and don’t contain mitochondria). So mitochondrial DNA tells you about your maternal line. There are three main differences between this and Y evidence: First, maternal lineage has historically been regarded as less important than paternal lineage, so English-speakers, at least, don’t have a maternal equivalent to surnames. Second, mitochondrial DNA mutates more slowly than does chromosonal DNA, so you can’t get as much detail from it. And third, everyone has mitochondria, even though men can never pass it on, so while a woman would need to use a male relative to examine the Y chromosone line, a man can investigate his own mitDNA line.
Unfortunately, neither of these methods works for mixed lines (one’s mother’s father’s father’s mother, for instance). One could, I presume, use other genetic markers (from chromosones other than the sex chromosones) to check for mixed lines, but I also presume that this would only be good for close relatives, before everything gets too mixed up to tell.
I’m pretty sure I read in the Guiness book (or some such semi-reputable source) that the oldest continual geneology is that of the Lurie family, who are a family of the afore-discussed Jewish priests.
Personally, my mom’s side dates back to southern plantation owners, so I’m pretty sure it can (and already has been) traced way way back, and my dad’s side comes from eastern european Jewish immigrants from the early 1900’s, so I doubt it could be traced back past Ellis Island.
Worth restating due to the inquiries here. They do both types of testing and combinations thereof. Reasonably priced, too, I’d say. They have a list of surname projects they are working on that you can join. Many families with common names are trying to sort out which ancestors are theirs, and which belong to unrelated families.
Going strictly on linear decent, according to my great-uncle Reed who did the research, my mother’s family can trace its descent back to the Capetian line in France. My dad’s family, I guess, if it were possible to trace them would go back to Ice Age immigrants across the Bering Bridge from Siberia.
But isn’t this a bit silly? We’re all descended from most civilizations on Earth. Think about it. Eveyone posting to this board had ancestors alive in 1600, 1000, 500, 1000 BCE. We all had family who lived and worked in the times of King Tut, Julius Caesar, Mohammed, Kublai Khan. We’re all related.
And why concetrate on the rich and powerful? Do we not all also have the blood of peasants, horsethieves, whores, and merchants? I prefer to believe that I’m related to everyone I read about in history who had children.
Unquestionably, we’re all descended from both royalty/nobility/aristocracy and the common folks – artisans, yeoman farmers, etc. However, it’s so much easier to establish the aristocratic lineages, because they were so much more apt to keep detailed records – their status depended on it. (Also there is an underlying current of self-aggrandisement in most people to show, “Hey, I’m descended from nobility!”)
One of the lineages I’m proudest of being able to show is the Carpenters, a family of English carpenters who adopted that as their surname and date back to the early 1300s. Lines like that which can be proven out are scarce.
I’ve traced mine back to a freakin FRENCH “stocking knitter”! Circa 1659
Andreas Nenaut (about 1659-1754) from the Picardie area of France.
But not only did he knit the badest mittens ever, he fought in the Frei-Kohorte of Herrn Moulin, in Wehrden (1712). Whatever the hell that was.
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.
He might be a she you never know. Have some respect for your ancestors. If it weren’t for them we wouldn’t be here and you may not have enough info to judge him/her. If he was a man maybe there weren’t enough women to do all of the knitting and a man attempting to do what was probably considered a woman’s job without instruction would likely do a bad job. My first attempt at a sweater wasn’t perfect and slipped stitches were sometimes impossible to pick up. It is not as easy as it looks. I respect every one of my ancestors for I am a part of each and every one of them.
Re: the OP’s original question - as far as how far back the average American can trace back – that’s kinda hard to answer. I would daresay that African Americans would have a harder time of it because of slavery (yes, I’m aware not everyone black is descended from slaves, but you know what I mean). That said, I have a black coworker who asked me to see what I could find out about her tree and I easily - EASILY - traced them back to the 1700s. She had the luxury of having ancestors that NEVER moved and never divorced.
I would think the “average” American could trace at least one of their little branches back to the 4th or 5th generation (great or great-great grandparents). There’s SO much information out there already just with the Mormons alone that it’s amazing what you can find if you just hop on their Familysearch site. It’s still a mere fraction of what could be recorded though. I get sad when I think of all the records that are gone forever because of fires or whatnot.
As far as my own personal tree – one of my branches is traced to early 1400s England. The rest of 'em usually run out of steam somewhere in Europe in the 16th & 17th centuries.
You realize you’re barking at the guy over something he wrote over 7 years ago, right?
And welcome to the Dope, btw 
I don’t know your origins, but this is suspect and would be unusual to the point of astonishing. Most European genealogy shuts down in the dark ages, when written records were nearly non-existent. To claim cited sources for lineage going back that early has to make me raise an eyebrow.
Yeah. The Wikipedia article on descent from antiquity has good info on the difficulties of getting past the dark ages for European genealogy.
I managed to trace my own lineage to Arnulf of Metz (CE 582-640), and that’s as far as anyone from Europe is going to get reliably. Beyond that, you do get lineages but they’re mostly dubious.
While essentially everyone in Europe is related to Arnulf, it’s tremendously fascinating to have a sequence of names. 45 generations from him to me. 2[sup]45[/sup] = 35,184,372,088,832. In that sense, he means nothing to me. On the other hand, my mother did mean a whole lot, and so did my grand father. And his father meant a lot to him, and so forth, and 45 people, for me, that’s a mid-sized family reunion. So Arnulf and I are either fairly close, or impossibly far from each other.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_family
Before that a Howard was married to Lady Godiva. Before that I believe there was a famous Hereward whose name got changed. Checking the wiki just now shows that may be just folklore. I’ve got the ancestry book all the way from then until they immigrated here, went south and became hillbillies. (My branch anyway.) It was hand made by a genealogist based on my family, not something I found in a bookstore.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:45, topic:284318”]
. . . which goes back to a Viking named Thorfinn Skullcleaver in (if I recall correctly) the 800s.
[/QUOTE]
OK, you officially when the prize for best ancestor name.