Where do the roots end?

[jess5athome]

Hi, I have been researching my family tree for a while with some degree of success, mainly i have to say with the help and kindness of the roots community who i cannot speak highly enough of.
My question is where or when do you know that you have reached the end of the line, or the beginning of any possible research.
One side of my tree research is the Denby family of the Snaith / Goole area of Yorkshire, I have got back as far as possibly my 12 x Great Grandfather in 1560 in Snaith, would this be classed as the end or beginning of the line or is there some other form of research to go even further back?
I have got that far with the help of Snaith parish church records.
Best regards always,
jess5athome

[spark]

I think you only know you have not reached the end when you find after x years another piece of information!

I have currently reached the end, for a number of branches, that I have time to research beyond 1750 ish.  If I did not have to work, I would be down the record office, going through every document they had and even then I would not know if I had reached the end of the lineage.

Cheers,
Spark

[barryd]

The answer is that it depends on how much money THEY had. Money provides records - inheritance, wills, property, squabbles and all records money/land need. The government is always interested in their money too. All the money a researcher has is not going to normally trace a working person back before church records. UNLESS the person does something dramatic and sails on the Mayflower!

[jess5athome]

Hi, I suppose that sort of person is what is known as a "Gateway", one of the descendants was buried in Snaith churchyard in 1789 along with his wife and his sister, they have a large headstone so were probably quite wealthy as I don`t think headstones were cheap.

[myluck!]

I think you only know you have not reached the end when you find after x years another piece of information!

I agree with SPARK; and must admit - you are never truly finished!

[Mike in Cumbria]

It's like painting. A picture is never finished, it just stops in an interesting place.

[smudwhisk]

We've had a few successes with late 1700s brickwalls of 10 years plus tumbling over the past 12 months, many of which we didn't think we'd ever knock down.   As records become more easily accessible and our skills at "thinking outside the box" have improved, we've been lucky to find the information needed to trace these ancestors.  As has already been said, I don't think research ever really finishes it's just subject to time, money and inclination to spend time looking at the minutest possibility.  As for Gateway ancestors, well having found one after demolishing a brickwall about 3 years ago, you never really know what you are going to find.  And yes we've got our fair share of ag labs going back to the 1500s and 1600s too.

[GrahamSimons]

It's endless, really. Realistically most people won't get back much further than the 17th century as record survival is so poor, and as mentioned many people will have left little or no trace. But there is so much scope for following collateral branches and for investigating the families of spouses.

I have a vicar of Perlethorpe, Notts, in the farther branches of my tree: would that he'd lived a few hundred years earlier as Perlethorpe has the one of the very oldest parish registers in England, established in 1528, ten years before the general instruction from Thomas Cromwell that parish registers should be kept.

[jess5athome]

Hi all, so reading what everyone has to say I can consider myself fortunate to get back to 1560.
Oh well, onwards and upwards,I will see what can be found regarding his children.
Best regards always, jess5athome.