How far back have you gone?

[7igerby7he7ail]

Pat. Tree 1610
Mat. Tree 1835
Wife
Pat. Tree 1605
Mat. Tree 1788

I have a couple of connected trees [marriages] one goes back to 1545, the other back to 1568

The maternal tree is Irish and after searching for about 5 years, I have abandoned it for a while.

[Annie65115]

I guess I've been very lucky on my mum's side - lots of people came from lots of different small villages, lots of the PRs are available and no-one was called Smith!

My earliest confirmed by myself through PR's, about 1640.

IGI has extracted records for another of my maternal lines to 1540 but the relevant fiche had gone walkabout when I went to the Grantham records office to check so I haven't seen this for myself yet!

I have copies of 2 wills written by ancestors born in the mid -  late 1600's; they are fascinating, once you get through the scrawl!


On my dad's side I have only got back to about 1800. A combination of commoner names, more misspellings, people living in towns and sailors who could have come from and gone anywhere continue to fox me.

[Lydart]

My fathers maternal line goes to 1550-ish, but I myself havent done all of that ... I was lucky it was an unusual surname with a one-name study already done ! 

I have got a tenuous link to Catherine Howard, which would push it further back, (she of the 'divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, BEHEADED, survived !!)   But I havent got time to go into it thoroughly, so at the moment, don't believe it !

[alftabor]

1535 on mother's Tree
1722 on father's side
these ancestors did not move around much until the 1850's and then they set out around the world,Argentina,Japan,Australia,New Zealand,France  and other places so that by 2000 very few remained in their original counties
Alf the exile in South Australia

[IrishOrigins]

Proven?  A couple from both maternal and paternal sides to the 1700s in Scotland and England.

At the moment I must confess I'm not even tempted to try to go further back, mainly because there are so many gaps since then that it will take me several lifetimes to fill them in.  That's OK, because I have no intention of going anywhere for a long time yet, I've far too much to do!!!!!

Once those gaps are filled () I will definitely be trying hard to track back with all of them including the Irish and I just know they are waiting to give me trouble. 

In the meantime I'm concentrating on trying to track the elusive ones from their arrival in Australia (from 1800 to 1823) until their next verified appearance - sometimes a death record, sometimes nothing - they just disappear into the mist.  I do have descendants of the disappearing ones though, so that's probably a plus!!

Philippa

[Mike Baldock]

1537 - birth of Sir Robert Bell

he married a Dorothy Beaupre who has a lineage going back way further but I've not looked at it or anything yet cos other folks have done it all which makes it a bit boring!

[johnnyboy]

I've gotten back to 1525 with one line, but not through much effort on my part. I saw on a Genuki surname page that someone was searching the name I was interested in. I sent an e-mail and a few weeks later I had a PDF of a carefully and thoroughly researched and annotated tree going back 225 years from our common ancestor in the 1750s. Part of the family has remained in the same town--near Wakefield--from the 1500s to the present.


Regards,
John