How many generations back can a genealogy service trace?

Question

a service like ancestry.com or genealogy.com

Answer 1

One geneology service traced one mans family back thousands of years prior to the advent of any known written language.  However, I don't think that is a typical result.  Geneology services can usually trace your lineage back several generations using public records.  Google genealogy services on the net.  They each make different claims as to what their individual companies can and will do.   Hope that helps.

Answer 2

The pay for genealogists can only go back as far as there are records. I've gotten back 38 generations without these services. Save your money and invest in a genealogy service like Ancestory.com...or just search the free internet sites like RootsWeb or Familysearch.org. I've been researching for 20 years by using the free sites, history books and interviewing family and friends of family. You can also just type the surnames you're researching into Google or other search engines and usually find reference to genealogical information or even encyclopedias. I've traced my roots back to the 7th century by using these methods.

Answer 3

For most of Western Europe, except France, Spain and Portugal, you can usually go to 1400 pretty easily because of the published Church records, land records and wills. France, Spain and Portugal are different because their bishops allowed the LDS to copy the records on film, but did not give permission for the records to be transcribed and republished. So unless you have a research buddy in one of those countries, it's hard to trace too far back on the internet.

In Poland, the records are starting to come online through volunteer efforts, like the Poznan Marriage Index and some Jewish research projects. The records are on film with the LDS, but you have to literally order one film at a time. The rest of Central Europe, including much of Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, etc, is hit and miss after the immigration records. You may find the records showing the person coming over, but you won't find multiple generations from a village in Slovakia before that. You're back to the LDS and researching through regional archives. The good news is that the regional archives in Europe are realizing that American genealogy can become a profitable business for them and they're starting to employ English-speaking research aides to answer inquiries and respond in English. The Ukraine, Russia and former Russian lands aren't easily researched on the internet. Don't expect to go back farther than 1880.

If you're looking for records from Central or South America, there's very little that is or will be on the internet. They had the Catholic Church keep official records for centuries and the Catholic bishops are not friendly to the idea of putting the sacramental registers on the internet. It's nothing more than pure ownership rights and they've exercised them. There's a little bit from the late 1800s and early 1900s online, but very little. There's also a question of cost and most of the countries down there don't have the money to build the infrastructure to index all those records and transcribe them onto the internet.

In French-Canadian and Acadian records, you can legitimately expect to go back 1-2 generations in France. All of the founders of Quebec and Acadia have well-researched and published lines.

English, Irish and Scottish Canadians have a little harder road because there aren't consistent passenger records durign the colonization period. You can probably have a reasonable expectation of going back to the time they arrived in Canada, which could be as early as the 1700s. But how far after that is hit-and-miss.

American records are great from the 1600s to the late 1700s. Then there's a gap of about 40 years where records were minimal and the information on them outright skimpy. You can usually hit the middle of the 1800s on the internet without a problem, but unless you know exactly where the family lived between 1790-1840, you'll need to do some serious research offline in a library or state archives. Then you can pick it up again in the 1790s and back to the colonial period. Immigration records from the 1800s aren't complete online, though they're immensely better than they were 4 years ago. The huge Castle Garden project for passenger records into NYC pre-Ellis Island hasn't hit the 50% mark yet, so there's  a lot still to come. The major group that's lacking is the Dutch, but the Scandinavians aren't well-transcribed, either.

If you're looking at Asia, the internet isn't the place to research. They haven't built the infrastructure and they haven't seen the merit in publishing "old records".

Australia is pretty decent, as is New Zealand. Just know that the same names were reused by many lines of the same family and it could get pretty difficult differentiating every Billy Jones. You can reasonably expect to go back to the arrival of first members of the family and should be able to pick up the trail in their country of origin. How many generations after that depends on which country that was.

Hope it helps.

Answer 4

On average, about 5-10 generations.  Record-keeping varies very widely between countries and regions.  Family records -- and memories -- are an excellent place to start.

Answer 5

i trace my mom side 800 years.

Answer 6

As far back as they have records.  I know my mom traced our scottish lineage back to King Duncan of Scotland because of all the documentation.  You lose the line when you lose the documents and records.

Answer 7

Depends how far back they have documents for your relatives, there isn't any specific generations. Some families have more documents reflecting their life than others.

Answer 8

i know this guy who did one of them deal or it was like a DNA test deal and they went way back like a 1000 years or something. but i find that hard to believe