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You trace your roots and listen to your parents tell you about relatives and you'd be suprised to find out some common acquaintances or coworkers are distant cousins.
Just take with a grain of salt anything they tell you beyond a couple of generations back. Most unresearched family stories about relationships to Indians and famous ancestors turn out to be untrue once you look at the written or dna evidence. I've debunked plenty.
My great-great-great-great uncle "Juan Crisostomo Falcon" (brother of my great-great-greatmother "Mercedes Falcon") was president of Venezuela in 1863
a state is named after him "Falcon state" (right under Aruba)
and there's statues of him in the capital of the state.
And more likely than not, my great-grandfather was a Venezuelan dictator (1908-1913)
he had 14 kids with his wife and about 50 with other women.
My great-grandmother worked for him as a cook and "nobody knows" who my great grandfather is.
The farthest back I can trace my paternal line is 16th century in the region of Darmstadt, Germany.
However, information on my maternal grandfather's family goes back a little farther thanks to the research of one of my mom's cousins. The oldest name belongs to my 40xgreat-grandfather, some dude known as Sveide the Viking.
On the paternal side, 1460. The story begins in the Tuscany/Milan region of Italy. Then onto Lancashire, UK...last name is modified to be more English. A few generations later, from Liverpool to Providence, RI by way of Boston. On both my father and mother's side are Revolutionary War Colonials. One in Rhode Island, and one in Virginia.
Anything more than 200 years ... more likely than not is bs
because 100-200 years ago people changed their last name, lots of single mothers having babies, etc.
Anything more than 200 years ... more likely than not is bs
because 100-200 years ago people changed their last name, lots of single mothers having babies, etc.
It's all about the quality of recordkeeping. Some places kept better records than others.
Anything more than 200 years ... more likely than not is bs
because 100-200 years ago people changed their last name, lots of single mothers having babies, etc.
I have several well documented lines that go back more than 200 years, complete with name changes due to Anglicization. Fortunately, a lot of my folks stayed in one place for extended periods and the courthouse records have survived, despite tornadoes and fires.
Were there unacknowledged bastards or undocumented adoptions? Probably. Hard to know. But the lines I have are connected by estate records.
To answer the original question, I have some going into the 1600s.
A lot of crap.
I can't figure how somebody in America is capable of knowing that some ancestor lived in X place in the year 1450 in Europe. A lot of B.S.
I live in Europe, I live in the place where my ancestors lived and I was not able to go beyond 1715.
A lot of crap.
I can't figure how somebody in America is capable of knowing that some ancestor lived in X place in the year 1450 in Europe. A lot of B.S.
I live in Europe, I live in the place where my ancestors lived and I was not able to go beyond 1715.
Maybe the records were destroyed. Maybe the records were lost. Maybe your family just wasn't important enough for anyone to bother keeping any records of them. *shrug*
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