How many generations or years can you trace your ancestors?

[Anonymous]

On my white side, back to author of Mayflower Compact, then earlier settlers in U.S. from around 1603, then back to Europe 1500s. Some kings, dukes. Could probably go back further.

[Anonymous]

Member of the Mayflower Society and DAR. An ancestor signed the Declaration of Independence.

[Anonymous]

1345, non-european

[Anonymous]

About 12/13 generations back on both sides. My Mother’s maternal line ancestors were on the Mayflower and then lived in what is now Boston/Cambridge for several more generations. My Father’s paternal line goes to one of the earliest Dutch crossings in the 1620s. I haven’t gone back to their lines in England/Netherlands because I still have holes in the American sides, I’m trying to fill and there were only like 100 people on the Mayflower so I’m sure someone else has done the work already and I’ll find it when I have the time and interest.

[Anonymous]

I wonder how many living people had ancestors on the Mayflower. I did. Seems cool, but there are probably 30 million of us now.

[Anonymous]

If you have an ancestor whose name is in the “Famous Kin” data base, that will go back many prior generations and also tell you about some of your (distant) and more famous cousins. It’s quite random. Mine include William Macy, Amy Poehler, Matt Bomer, Ken Burns, Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bill Clinton.

[Anonymous]

Five or six generations in Poland. I could probably do more if I could read Polish or Cyrillic. It's peasants all the way down.

[Anonymous]

Mid-1600’s on my dad’s side (England, Ireland, and Scotland by way of Nova Scotia…straight to VA prior to the Revolutionary War.
Mid 1500’s on my mom’s side (Ulster Scots and Irish).

[Anonymous]

Several of my ancestors were ennobled around 900 in France.

My great-grandfather, a historian and genealogist, started his history of our family starting at that period, helped by personal diaries and documents of their time in official military and governmental positions.

[Anonymous]

1635 Massachusetts

[Anonymous]

Most likely back to around the 1680s. If the church kept records. For both my maternal and paternal ancestors. Maternal grandpa was landed gentry and unless the records were burned that branch lived on the same land for many generations. On maternal grandmother's side about the same time, and one of mom's "ancestors" was a well-known officer who participated in a coup against the King in the first decade of the 20th century.
On my father's side essentially since 1680 when the famine had them move north and settle where grandpa was born in 1905. My paternal grandmother lived on the same land that her family lived on for centuries. Her house where she was born in 1910 still stands and is in my family.
I am clearly from Europe and that makes it much easier.

[Anonymous]

Dad has us back to the mid 1200s. Dhs uncle has them back to the 1500s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One branch of my family arrived in what were then the American colonies in the 1630s. Before that, they spent a couple hundred years in what became England, having hitched a ride across the channel in 1066 with the rest of William’s invaders.

I can answer your question because I’m white, and tie into a branch of a prominent family. So folks along the way thought their births/marriages/deaths were worth keeping track of. But dogs and horses have pedigrees too; having this info doesn’t make me any better or worse than someone who doesn’t.

+1

I enjoy genealogy and can get back 13-14 generations on several branches of my tree. But part of me feels uncomfortable with the whole thing. Then another part of me loves the puzzle and likes considering events in American history relative to my particular ancestors.

[Anonymous]

One side of my family we can get back to to the 1750s. Another side stops cold in 1910 or so- it’s like they didn’t exist before Ellis Island. My DH’s family is from Asia and has nothing before his grandparents; any evidence of their heritage let alone desire to look backwards basically disappeared with World War II.

My dad (whose side is the one with extensive records) was really into genealogy and he saw it as both validation and a way to leave a legacy, and I used to share his anxiety about finding all of our family records. Marrying into a family with such little recorded history made me care a lot less about the whole thing and it’s a relief.

[Anonymous]

Back to Genghis Khan.