My grandfather went to the town in Poland where some of his ancestors may have come from, but due to the unfortunate incident that had occurred in the region in the interim, he didn’t find much.
I have the same surname as a Hassidic dynasty but it’s a common enough name* that I don’t think it means anything
*At a dentist’s office nearby, I noticed a fellow patient had the same name as my sister. A Facebook friend has a friend who also has the same name as my sister. These are three different women.
I have coworkers from China who say that their families maintain books passed from fathers to first sons where names and maybe some biographical notes are written and such books go back many generations.
I only know the names and birth/death reliably of grandparents. Great grandparents is murky but if I had been more interested when grandparents were still alive I could have cleared this up.
Lesson: Talk and take notes. Consider the practice of my Chinese friends – imagine such a book from the 1700s in your hands!
Also, you always read that x famous person is proven to be descended from charlemagne or some other historical figure. I’ve searched though and I can never find a place that actually describes the lineages, ie a detailed list of people leading back from person x to charlemagne or another historical figure. Also, there has to be a detailed geneology of charlemagne somewhere? Because I’d like to try to find how I am related.
It isn’t true these days that you can’t have real proof that you are descendant of a person very far back especially if you are male. I am a direct descendant of settlers of the 1st Colony at Jamestown for example circa 1610 or so (Richard Pace I and Isabella Smyth). I have the last name and mounds of documentation to go with it down through every generation because genealogy is my hobby as well.
My Jamestown ancestors were not wealthy and not very notable in general except for an incident where they played a key role in saving the colony for an Indian attack. However, there is an extreme genealogy interest in all of the Jamestown history and the other Johnny Come Lately settlers like those from the Mayflower in general.
There is a whole society formed around my ancestors and they were about 40,000 strong the last time I checked. As a direct male descendant, they offer genetic testing of your Y chromosome to provide ultimate proof and become a certified member. The Y chromosome gets passed down remarkably intact through male lineages through many generations and can be used as proof of ancestry. I haven’t done that because it cost about $500 but other members of the male lineage have and were certified for it. Even very old lineages can be proven in some circumstances through DNA testing.
Cite, please? I read a paper studying a rarish but ancient surname that claimed the opposite: they were surprised that cuckolding was less than they expected.
The rapid rise of DNA testing is solving mysteries. As just one example, the semi-mythical claims of several ancient Irish families to be agnates of the O’Neil dynasty have been proven correct.
Nitpick: It’s yet two generations longer still, but the descent that legitimized the Duke of York’s claim (based on cognatic primogeniture) was this:
Edward III > Lionel, Duke of Clarence > Philippe of Clarence > Roger Mortimer, Earl of March > Anne de Mortimer > Richard, Duke of York > Edward IV
Ordinary Brit here. I have most of my lines back past compulsory registration in 1837 and well over half to official Parish Records starting at the end of the sixteenth century in England. I have one line back to early fifteenth century, only because they served on one estate for five generations before parish registers and the estate papers still exist. But I have no serious middle class or higher ancestors- all Ag Labs, or stewards at most!
My cousin on the other hand has one middle class 18th century line which took his family out to Virginia and back. On return one of gentleman class men married a daughter of minor aristocracy, and this line traces back to the conquest in several lines, hence to French aristocracy and Royalty, and along the way Scottish Kings (including Macbeth), Irish chieftains, Welsh landowners and so on. As several of his lines go back to William the Conqueror, his genealogy spreads back to about 300ce and maybe further. He is also a fourth cousin to the Queen through the same family, and related to George Washington, Robert E Lee and Meriwether Lewis through his family that remained in Virginia.
It is worth pointing out that once you are seven times removed from a person, you share no more DNA with that person than with the average person in your race/group/nationality etc!
Your y-chromosome (if you have one) is passed from father to son and therefore links you back through the male line (your father, your paternal grandfather, and so on) to exactly one person in each generation.
If you go back to the Jamestown colony (early 17th century, approx 12 to 16 generations ago), your male-line ancestor in that generation may have other living male-line descendants who are related to you only very distantly (for example 13th cousin, 14th cousin 3 times removed, or whatever) through that line.
However, that same person is likely to be your 5th or 7th cousin through some unknown lines that include one or more female ancestors.
I have a last name that is unusual. I am 11th generation American on my father’s side from the UK and we know it 2 generations back prior to that. The original guy came here in 1640. We all are quite up to date on the family history and lore.
Earlier this year in business I came across a guy 2500 miles away with the same last name. His branch of the family also knows their genealogy and we traced it back that our family branches broke apart from different sons of the grandson of the original immigrant to the USA.
On my mother’s side we have no idea earlier than 3 generations ago other than they came down from Quebec.
My wife can trace it to Mayflower descendants on both sides of her family.
Tracing ancestors that came from Canada can be difficult and frustrating, even if you know the name of the immigrant. My cousin’s male line is like that. I was able to find out when he crossed the border, but prior to that it’s as though he landed in a UFO. Secretive lot, they are.
Common mistakes people make when considering this possibility:
Thinking that royalty and commoners are perpetually divided in some magic way.
That people only research one ancestral line looking for royalty. You take advantage of exponential growth in ancestors, generally following the more well-off or prominent people.
That no one alive is knowingly descended from Charlemagne. Lineages for all the usual living European royals like QEII show such descent.
The trick is getting back 200+ years. Once you get there in several lineages, the chances of one of them hitting fairly prominent people goes way up.
As anyone who has attempted to research their family history will attest, there are many family trees on sites like Ancestry, that are pretty much fiction. Someone further back said ‘Go to the parish church and find a baptism certificate, then go back twenty years or so and find the marriage.’ This is not considered good evidence - only a possible. To be provable, you need much more than a coincidence of name and place - especially since a village may have a large number of people with the same or similar names.
The problem that these semi-fictional trees create is that if a naive individual makes a genuine connection to one, they may assume that the rest is gospel.
It used to be fairly reliable, but that was early on when genealogists actually provided source citations instead of copying nonsense from other people. Any time I see the source as “Smith Family Tree” or some such, I automatically reject it as being not valid. I can reliably trace my family’s history in America to the Mayflower on one side (those trees have been proven and documented over and over again by many), and to immigration dates on other trees. Jumping the pond is more difficult, but I have a few lines going to the UK that I believe are accurate.