Mary Queen of Scots. Robert The Bruce. Adam and Eve etc.....

[Jean Jeanie]

How do the panel feel about folk who say they have traced their families back to these historic people?

In particular about folk who do have a genuine tree back to the late 1600's
and insist that they have documentary evidence back to these historic people.

Jean

[Russell]

Hi Jean

I don't know how to blow a raspberry from the keyboard but will a simple "Nuts to you" do ?

Its bad enough pre 1855 getting confirmed evidence so claiming firmly established links is a bit pie in the sky.

I'll stick to my 'ag labs'.

Russell

[Ina]

I have people in my genealogy club who claim to have traced their ancestors back to the 1400's. If they want to believe they have found their rellies just because they found a name in a book........so be it. I personally don't add anyone to my tree unless I have a birth, death or marriage record.

Here in the USA everyone wants to belong to the DAR (daughters of the American Revolution). They claim they must have proof of their ancestors back to the 1600's. I'd like to know where they all find this proof.

Ina

[sheilajim]

Hi Jean

If someone has documentation to Mary Queen of Scots, like Queen Elizabeth 11, fine for them.

But as for Noah, Adam & Eve, I almost can't suppress my laughter. I did meet a man who told me that he had traced his ancestry back to 300 AD. Somehow I managed, with great difficulty, not to laugh, or even get facetious, and tell him that I was a direct descendent of Helen of Troy, and Santa Claus.

I remember once reading, that one time President ,Richard Nixon, was a descendent of Julius Ceasar!

Why people want to do this is beyond me. I suppose that it makes them feel important.

I just say, "Really" and give a smile.

It is possible for some lucky people to trace back to the 1600's, or earlier, but even the Royal Family, which is well documented can't go back much further than 1000 AD

Regards

Sheila

Researching Genuine Ancestors: McDonald, McLaren, Boyd, Kennedy, Dun, Key/Kay McKinnon, McKee, McNab, Morran, Langan

[marilyn morning]

Hello

For what my two cents is worth

The Massachusetts State Archives holds records dating back to pre Revolutionary War http://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc/arcgen/genidx.htm#mac

And much to my surprise I was able to find a copy of the following trial at the courthouse here in Rhode Island. http://www.historycooperative.org/journ ... yton.shtml

The person I found it for could not believe their

I just received an e-mail today with the following message attached.

"Adam hadn't told me that you have been researching the family, but that is a big thing they do in Utah. There is a library fully dedicated to it! My Grandmother has traced my fathers side of our family to the 9th century VIkings so far!"

The above paragraph was written by my niece-in-law. She was born and raised in Utah. I have no idea how to answer her back.

Regards
Marilyn

[Russell]

Hi Marilyn

I suggest that, like Sheila, you are very restrained and non-committal in your reply. Something like "Oh Really" can't get you into trouble. Then you can move on to factual rather than fictional things!!
Keep a bored expression on your face and keep the giggle inside where it doesn't show

Russell

[DavidWW]

All I'm going to say is that if someone wants to believe a tree going back however many centuries, when there isn't necessarily the full documentation on sources etc., then who am I to criticise


In the context, however, I'd offer the following posting from Roy Stockdill on soc.genealogy.britain a few years ago .............




FIND ALL YOUR ANCESTORS ONLINE!

© Roy Stockdill Other than for personal research purposes, you may not modify, copy, reproduce, re-publish, upload, post, transmit or distribute this article in any way. If you wish to republish whole or part of this article for anything other than personal use please contact Roy Stockdill.

WELCOME to my super-fast instant ancestry programme! I am proud to announce the launch of an exciting new service for wannabe family historians who find research the old-fashioned way rather boring. You, too, can have a family tree back to Adam and Eve ENTIRELY from the Internet!!! Here is an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be repeated offer.....

SEND me $10,000, your date of birth, your chest and inside leg measurements, the location of the pub where your granny met your grandad and the name of that milkman with the hairy nose that your Auntie Maude had the wild affair with - and I guarantee I will have your family tree at least back to Nebuchadnezzar the Daft of Outer Mongolia in the 3rd century BC before you can say "IGI" !!!

NO more listening to boring old farts droning on how about how you need to read a book on family history. Books - outdated, who needs 'em?

NO more need to visit dreary old Record Offices or waste your precious time looking at boring bits of paper covered in squiggly writing that you can't understand anyway.

NO more need to listen to self-appointed, so-called experts who try to tell you they can help you just because they've been in genealogy since March 1897 and who will try and persuade you to join a family history society where you will meet hordes of equally boring people who also think they know it all.

Guaranteed Results !!!

I absolutely guarantee you a family tree you can be proud of, one that will show your descent from such famous historical figures as Mary Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Francis Drake, William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, the Norse god Woden, Charles II's head coachman's illegitimate son, a 4th cousin twice removed of Henry VIII, Cyril the Incontinent of Babylon, Frederick the Flatulent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Baron Frankenstein, Joan Collins and the Man in the Off-Licence Round the Corner.

How do I do it? Simple - I log onto the Internet, spend half an hour or so trawling the world wide web and - bingo! - there is your Instant Family Tree! Here's how it works...

First, I find the marriage of your great-granny on the IGI, then I find someone of the same name who was born in a parish 100 miles away from where she was married, so that's bound to be her, isn't it? Then I e-mail this mate of mine who specialises in doing look-ups from the 1861 census [which hasn't been indexed] in places like London, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow.

He sticks a pin in anywhere on the census and gives me a couple more names to work with. I reckon they have as much chance as being your gt-gt-grandparents as anyone else, so it's back to the Net. I feed the names into umpteen databases and websites until I come up with someone of the same name who claims to be descended from Edward III. Ah, yes, this looks as good a bet as any. Nobody is going to notice if I casually slip your gt-gt-grandad and granny into a GEDCOM that shows they were also descended from Alfred the Great and the monk who did the slopping-out at Whitby Abbey, are they?

So there you have it - a wonderful, Instant Family Tree, and all from the Internet. And what I don't find I simply MAKE UP!!! What could be easier? Apply now for the bargain of all time and discover how to make Internet genealogy really work for you!


Roy Stockdill, Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies
The Stockdill Family History Society

Web page:- 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)

[mallog]

I think it's possible to go back with certainty if you're in the ranks of the nobility from the start but if you suddenly make a connection in the 16/1700's then no. You just have to keep it as a possibility. I remember being told an Uncle (and this would be at least 50yrs ago) had traced our family back to King Kenneth McAlpine. How he did this I don't know!! With all the resources available to us today to make life easier I haven't got further back than late 1700's with my McAlpines. In Scotland with the naming pattern and so many children in each family you can end up with too many with the same name from the same area and all about the same age. Even finding an OPR that seems to fit doesn't mean there wasn't a dozen others. By the way the story goes that when the Uncle died a nephew who had no interest in family history took the tree and burnt it. Funny thing is, now years later I was able to give this same nephew information about his mother whom he knew nothing about and he was grateful.

[LesleyB]

Hi all
I just don't know how folk do it, if indeed their tree is genuine and proven.

If your people are ordinary folk, doing ordinary jobs and leading ordinary lives you must need an enormous stroke of luck to take them back, with confidence, to the 1600s and earlier. In some cases it must be possible if there is a lot of documentation such as wills, property transfers, marriage contracts & etc. but many of these types of documents would surely only have been drawn up if there was a bit of money and/or property in the family! And I'm sure it helps hugely if your rellies were accommodating enough to have lived in a Parish were the records are an example of detailed perfection, ...then, well, it might just be possible.

I can see no way of taking my lot back before the early 1700s without spending the rest of my life at NAS and other archives! (not an unpleasant thought...)

...and even then, it is so much a matter of chance what documentation was created and what of that has survived, with a huge element of chance of one document leading to another if you are lucky. With a bit of experience of coming across things by lucky accident whilst rummaging around in archives it seems there is even an element of chance in how any surviving material has been indexed as to whether you will find it or not!

Best wishes
Lesley

[joette]

There are some lucky people who have archives relating to their family tree ie Family papers,bibles etc.I know one such exsisted in my lifetime & was briefly glimpsed before my Great-Uncle-the 0nly survivng son burned it on a bonfire!
However all was not lost & helped me verify an ancestor back to 1720 my most distant rellie.Granny had remembered a name from the Bible & had spoke of it when Dallas was a popular TV show!
I have a friend who has a distant ancestor's Obituary(he lived to be 105)& he was a soldier a Scottish soldier& through papers he had collected was able to track back with almost certainty to 1675.
But back to Julias Caesar- although I do have some strange scarring which tingles in March around about the Ides!.