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My cousins traced my family ancestry back to the revolutionary war. But before that is a blank page. In other words we don't know the location in Europe that they came from and not even the country for sure because names changed often when people immigrated and when they settled in this country. So I am wondering if there is a link to a European source of geneology information that can help that someone might know of.
Colonial families are often very well documented. Look for local history books which may mention early or important settlers of the area.
What colony did they settle in? When it comes to colonial times, you can usually narrow down the most likely European heritages by where they settled. For example, if they settled in PA, they were probably either English Quakers, Swiss/Germans, or to a lesser extent, Dutch (who had moved down from the Dutch colony into the Delaware Water Gap) and Scotch-Irish.
It depends a lot on where in colonial America your ancestors were living. For instance, Massachusetts has good records of original immigrants. If you tell us where, someone might be able to steer you to a specific source.
Sometimes also there are ships lists. I think there are entire websites dedicated to that now.
As the previous poster said, for New England, just type a town into google and you can come up with the local history--as long as you have a town. In the local history there were usually such small towns that your ancestors will show up in stories and anecdotes even if they did nothing more than own a farm or run a sawmill. There would be lists in the town history of the men who went off to the Rev. War. I've typed in a town and the person's name and have come up with their dates and where they came from. There are some cases where no one knows, such as "thought to have come from Holland" or said to have been "Scots Irish."
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