How far back have you got?

[wellie]

 have been doing my family name for about ten yrs off & on. I've got as far as 1750ish with the tree.been stuck for a couple of yrs now. I've got names as far back as 1500 again can not connent the to my tree.hopeing someone will leave me a family tree with every thing in place lol

[Dolgellau]

I can go back as far as Adam and Eve!

Adam was created on October 13th 4004 BC according to Archbishop Usher - a noted 17th centaury genealogist. So thats 6000 years 3 months three weeks and 1 day - although as Adam was created as an adult it might be longer

This isn't as difficult to do as it might sound - I only traced one branch of my family back to 1720 where I found that I was descended from a farmer who was the youngest son of a "noble" family who is included in genealogies of the great and the good. (All down-hill from there )

All Welsh noble families are inter-related and there is a document in Jesus Collage Oxford which shows how one of them, the Tudors of Penmynydd AGY (Henry VIII, Elizabeth I etc), are descended, through a common ancestor, from Adam!

On the other hand I am stuck in 1833 with my paternal grandfather's maternal line and in 1926 with my wife's mother's family - so even those of us who can boast that we have gone all the way, still have the same brick walls that frustrate the vast majority of family historians.

[MarieC]

I am just working on my paternal grandmother's family, as other family members are working on other parts of the family.  (Lots of us bitten by the bug!)

With two lots, I am back to about 1800 and there are an assortment of problems about going further back.  With one branch I got lucky - found something on the Net that takes them back to the thirteenth century!  Nothing to do with my good research.

You never know - might get clues about the others one day!

MarieC

[hlbradd]

A cousin of my Dad's has got our BLANKS line back to the mid 1500s in Cambridgeshire.   I haven't yet put it all onto my tree until I've checked it out, got copy certificates yet, etc.   

I've got back to the late 1700s on a couple of lines.   

So why is it the one branch I really want to sort out as I am one of the few descendants is causing me the biggest headaches ?

And my Dad's family is a dead end in the Isle of Wight?
Grrrrrrr...........

Helen

[Berlin-Bob]

Dolgellau,

looks like you are one up these family historians then:

1st Historian: "I can trace our lineage back to Alexander the Great, but the records were lost when the Library of Alexandria was burnt down"

2nd. Historian: "How unfortunate ! Our family records were lost in the Deluge"

Seriously though,

We do have a family tree  printed in the Jewish Encyclopedia from 1905, that goes back to 1550, but I can't claim that I, personally had anything to do with that research, so I feel shy about  claiming it.

My own personal efforts have only got back to the early 19th century.

[Keith Sherwood]

About forty years ago a great-aunt of mine handed me a rolled up tree showing the pedigree of the Gurney family, which went back through the name variants to Gourney, Gournay, de Gournay, to about the year 800 in Normandy.
For some reason she imagined there might, somewhere, be a mutation of the name, perhaps in the 15th Century, to my mother's family name of Gournard/Gurnard/Gourner/ and finally Gurner, today. 
The Gurner family are quite straightforward to trace as between at least 1560 and 1897 they stayed in the same small village in Ickleton, Cambridgeshire as tenant farmers.
I am sure the link, if there is indeed one, must be wishful thinking.  One little puzzling detail, though.
The man who was Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Gurney, who was a Royalist and died in the Tower as a prisoner in 1647 was born as Richard Gurnard in 1577 in Croydon, Surrey.  For some reason, when he was knighted by King Charles he changed his surname from Gurnard to Gurney.
Finally, one of the helms on the Gurney coat of arms in the 15th C. is a downward-pointing gurnard fish.
Just wishful thinking, of course, imagining one can trace one's family back to 800...  but I still have an occasional poke about amongst 15th Wills from time to time...
Keith