June Ridsdale wrote..... >>Does anyone have any ideas regarding how far back we can honestly say we can go in genealogy [and be documented that we have a genuine family line!] It is very difficult to read the Parish Records, as an example, unless one made a study of the ancient handwriting. The inks are faded. The pages get torn and/or brittle etc. So many things that would make it impossible to get into the past beyond certain years. Some ministers recorded events in the early 1700's by saving as much space as they could, and the writing is not only faded, but very squished into small areas. There must be some general opinions on this subject. The reason I ask is because I have heard people say they go back to some historical figure that existed in 800 or 1200 or similar. Is that likely to be an official line or a figment of imagination?<< THERE are absolutely no hard and fast rules on this, or even generalisations. Every single case is individual. As to getting back to 800, 1200 or whatever, the number of people who can achieve this is tiny and almost entirely restricted to those who can prove BEYOND DOUBT a connection to a royal line. For instance, via female lines - known as "gateway" ancestors - there are undoubtedly many people who have a descent from Alfred the Great (849-899), King of Wessex, but the number who can actually prove every link in the chain is another matter! Likewise, the Emperor Charlemagne (742-814) was estimated as long ago as 1949 to have some 20 million living descendants and I expect the number has probably doubled by now (Bush and Gore are claimed to be among them, I heard). Descendants of English monarchs like Edward I and Edward III and Charles II are legion (the latter in entirely illegitimate lines) and the descendants of more recent monarchs like George III and Queen Victoria are widespread also. In general terms, the ordinary person is doing well in my opinion to get back much beyond the early 1700s (most of my lines run out in this period), since even if you find people with the right names in the right parish registers you cannot always be absolutely certain without other supporting evidence (such as wills) that they are yours, especially if they had common surnames! I am talking UK genealogy here, of course. Theoretically at least, some people may be able to get back to Tudor times, since parish registers began in 1538, though few survive from that date. Before that the sources become rarer and are largely confined to the well-off families who had lands and properties and who were, therefore, more likely to appear in manorial records and such like. Ironically, though, the two classes of people who were best recorded are the rich and the very poor - the former for obvious reasons (they would probably have documents relating to property etc) and the latter because they were often likely to be found in parish Poor Law records. It was the great mass of ordinary people in between, those who were neither very rich nor very poor (the ancestors of most of us, in fact!) who never did anything that caused their names to be written down anywhere. Another irony is that it is often easier to trace a relatively poor family who remained in one place for many generations than a wealthier, more upwardly mobile family who moved around a lot. However, I fear there are many people in genealogy who allow themselves to indulge in wishful thinking and will lay claim to all kinds of ancestors that they simply cannot prove. A word of caution is appropriate here perhaps - never accept those pedigrees in Ancestry File (on the LDS web site) or on the Broderbund World Family Tree CDs without checking them yourself. And as for those who claim descent from biblical figures and other luminaries in the ancient world (BC, that is).....AAAARGH, keep them away from me! Roy Stockdill Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS) STOCKDILL PREST YELLOW BOLTON WORSNOP GIBSON MIDGLEY BRACEWELL SHACKLETON BRADLEY MOODY in Yorkshire North & West Ridings MEAD YOUNG in Somerset, Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- http://www.one-name.org ”Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845)