Devon Noel Lee
6 min
"How far back have you traced your family tree?" The dreaded question people ask someone interested in genealogy.
While many think they have asked a question triggering polite conversation, this question and its kid sister, "How far back can you trace your family tree?" It can make a serious family historian groan.
However, we know a few things that the person asking doesn't realize. Let's cover those now.
Experienced genealogists know that family history research is about time and place. A researchers ability to find a long ancestral line depends on the following factors:
country of origin
ethnicity
naming traditions
use of surnames
the religion of each generation
migration of each generation
socioeconomic status of each ancestor
Let's explore just one limiting factor in the ability to trace a lineage - the country of origin.
Some cultures have an oral history culture. For example, my friend from Samoa has to ask a village leader about her ancestry preceding her grandparents.
Some countries did not have archives set up to maintain records or laws requiring documentation creation until recently. For example, in Australia, census records were taken but then destroyed. By contrast, Canada had inconsistent Census records.
In the United States of America, some places didn't keep civil birth and death records until the 1910s, while other locations have accessible records into the 1800s. So while some documentation does reach back into Colonial America, not every colony has such a collection.
Apparently, Switzerland has kept public records for 715 years. In Iceland, many people have their family history traced back 30 generations.
China maintained lineage records for at least the last 2,000 years. The longest line of ancestry is apparently the Kang(姜) clan, which is 5,200 years old.
Across the globe, how far back you can trace your family tree depends on your lineage, being lucky enough to have a few limiting factors.
For many experienced family historians, once you know where a person's family lines are likely from, any lineage before 1400 raises many eyebrows of skepticism.
For more commentary on this subject, subject this video.
Quality genealogy research depends on documentation. However, there are a few problems with attempting to construct a family tree back to Biblical Adam.
First, languages are not consistent throughout history. Have you heard of Modern English, Middle English, and Old English?
Few people alive today can easily read Old English. The same holds true for Old German.
On my way, I have a photograph of Chinese calligraphy as it changed from ancient times to the present. Few Chinese people can read the preceding language, let alone the old script. Most of those scholars who can read the ancient script lack significant interest in genealogical records.
Next, even though records may exist in a location back to 5,500 years, the details
contained on those records did not always include genealogies.
Finally, when records cease, it's impossible to trace a person's ancestry. So let us remember that prehistoric time involves a time before written records and transitions in the realm of archaeology.
Archaeology records can tell you a culture wove baskets, made iron tools, or hunted various wild beasts. But pre-historic records can not specify the identity of a single individual. Therefore, we can not know who begat whom or who married whom to the first human who ever lived.
Researching family history requires more effort than hopping on FamilySearch's one-world family tree and clicking on preceding generations until the lines stop. It also means more than connecting your family tree with other family trees on Ancestry or MyHeritage and doing essentially the same task.
Searching for ancestry means validating relationships and identifying supporting documentation about each individual on your family tree. It means going beyond birth, marriage, and death records to explore census, land, tax, newspaper, and probate records, to name a few.
On the conservative side, let's say it takes me 10 hours to research each of my 128 direct ancestors, which would reach my 5th great-grandparents). So it would take me eight years working an average of 3 hours a week.
Would those eight years of working casually on my 128 ancestors mean I'm more or less experienced than someone who says they have a family tree with 10,000 names in it?
If you said less experienced, then let's do the math.
Of the 10,000 names in a person's tree, did they really spend 10,000 hours ensuring each person has reliable documentation?
If they worked 3 hours a week on their family history, it would take 641 years to complete. If they worked 40 hours a week for an entire year, it would take 48 years to research each person in that database.
In family history research, there are researchers, and there are name-gatherers. Name-gathers brag about their family tree's size and insist they have definitively proven their ancestry back royalty in the 1500s.
Name-gatherers will also respond with disappointment when I say, "I have traced my family tree reliably back to the 1800s in Ohio."
I often exclude my Comfort line that goes back to Colonial America but moved to Canada after the American Revolution. The reason is I have not personally validated these relationships and explored the records for the Comforts.
A name-gatherer doesn't want to hear how I keep trying to tackle my Swedish Anderson brick wall. William Anderson lived in Howard County, Missouri, in the 1880s, and no records, besides the census that year and the death record of his daughter, document him. I would love to research him further by the lack of documentation and no DNA matches make it impossible for me to put that line beyond the 1880s.
A name-gather doesn't want to hear how I have searched nearly every document I can currently access for my German immigrant ancestor Joseph Geiszler. He seems to have been plucked out of Baden, Germany before 1856 and dropped into Franklin County, Ohio, with no other kin besides his wife, whom he met in Ohio.
Finally, a name-gatherer doesn't want to hear that a family tree with no evidence or poor-quality sources makes for a false tree.
If you're a name-gatherer, stop asking a fellow genealogist, "How far back have you traced your family tree?" It triggers eye-rolls and reduces camaraderie.
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As I have acquired more experience as a family historian, my focus has shifted from extending my family lines into the past to writing family histories.
I tell writing workshop attendees to write their ancestors' stories if they t want to become better genealogists - even those boring, non-famous ancestors. Their story matters.
I wrote the rough drafts for 120 ancestors in one year. I followed my Recipe for Writing Family History formula, which made this a fun project. I quickly accomplished the task based on 15 years of family history research, working in my spare time.
The ancestors that I have researched became real to me as I uncovered the depth of their stories. If I were to go back in time to meet them, I would know where to find them and what they were doing. I would know how many people are in their homes and about their particularly happy or challenging years.
This knowledge is so satisfying that I’m always hungry to learn more. To find one more record about anyone that I know and anyone that I discover along the way.
Instead of asking a genealogist how far back they have traced their genealogy, ask one of these questions instead:
Who are you researching right now?
What brick wall ancestor are you trying to figure out?
What discovery have you made recently?
Have you written a story about an ancestor that I can read?
If you would like to learn how to research your ancestors further or write their stories, read one of these blog posts.