re: Ancestry.com

quote:

---

He traced my paternal grandmothers side back to the 1100’s.

---

Where the hell did they have record keeping in the 1100’s?

I have a typed family tree that is in excess of 800 pages, and that is just my direct linear ascendants. However, cousin, to make a long story short:

Realize that every generation doubles the number of people in your family tree. Two parents, four grandparents, 8 great grandparents, then 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048 (in only ten generations, or maybe 250 years), etc. Meanwhile, as you go back in time the known population of the world gets smaller and smaller.

In 1999, the Yale statistician Joseph Chang showed that if you go back far enough – say, 32 generations, or 900 years – you’d find that everyone alive today shares a common ancestor. In Europe, where lineages have been closely studied, that ancestor was someone who lived just 600 years ago.

The development of the science of genetics has confirmed the math published by Dr. Chang in 1999. A 2013 study from Peter Ralph and Graham Coop built on Chang’s research, proving that all Europeans come from the same people. More recently, geneticist Adam Rutherford has demonstrated that virtually everyone in Europe is indeed descended from royalty – specifically from Charlemagne, who ruled western Europe from 768 to 814. So, welcome to the Order of the Crown, y'all.

If you can actually construct your individual family tree it can be interesting reading. I had ancestors who fought in battles on opposing sides. If one had killed the other then every relative I've known would not exist, nor would I.

I've been working on my tree for about 6 years now. I was lucky enough that my late cousin Eugene had created one back in the 70's and presented my grandfather with a copy. It was a good starting point for the new tree I started to create. One thing I had to do first was confirm and correct some things on his tree which consumed the first year or so of working on the new family tree.

So far on my own surname side of the family, I've been able to trace my family back to my 12th GGF, which is back to the 1500's in the Black Forest area of Germany.

My paternal grandmother, her lineage has nobility in it. I was able to trace her ancestors back to the early 1000's back to Normandy. My ancestors on that side of the family came to England with William the Conqueror and their names are mentioned in the Domesday Book. That is the furthest I've been able to go back.

On the maternal side of the family, I've been able to get back to the 1300's in France but no further.

It is a project that never ends.

The coolest thing though is that one of my distant cousins I've come into contact with, it was his mother that helped my cousin Eugene create the first family tree book. He found her name and wrote to her in the 70's and they began to share information. Now her son and I are doing the same thing.

You can also use this website

wikitree

I was able to corroborate a lot of my research using this.