How old is your family history? and what country did your ancestors originate from?

Question

My mothers family name, Sorzano, originates from Spain and my ancestor was Don Manuel Sorzano, one of the first colonists to come to Trinidad in the early 16th century. The name itself dates back to the 10th century.

My dads family name, Wilson, is originaly Scottish but am not sure how old tho.

Answer 1

Haven't went too far back yet, but so far with my maiden name Genna, My most famous ancestors are the enemies of Al Capone, The Genna Crime family....And General Wainwright of the civil war.

Answer 2

About 1639, from Valkenburg in the Netherlands.  Came over with Stuyvesant.  Hard to trace in the Netherlands because many people used the patronymic (their father's first name as their last name). From some time in the very remote past, the family must have come from Germany, because the name is Bavarian.

Mother's family is mostly English and Welsh.

There were also some early people who came from France, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland also, but went to Canada.   I also have ancestors from Sweden.

I'll bet the whole bunch came here just one step ahead of the law, as many of our ancestors did.

Kind of makes me a real cross-breed. I envy people who can trace their ancestry to only one country.

Answer 3

My first ancestors to arrive in what is now the U.S. got here in 1611 in Jamestown.  They were from England.  My last ancestors to arrive in the U.S. got here in the 1880s. They were from Germany and Poland.  A lot of other ones also imigrated in between.  I have ancestors from all over Europe.  I also descend in 7 different lines from British royalty.  No, I did not just read this somewhere on the internet and take it for granted.  My family has known about much of this for generations and we have the documents to back it up.  

My royal ancestors had political marriages with their neighbors, who in turn had political marriages with their neighbors and so forth.  This gets my family tree back quite far, all over Europe, and into the early medieval Middle East.  Some lines go really far back, like into BC.  Of course, back that far things start to get more tenuous, so even though the source says its true, it may not be.  Someone could have transcribed something wrong, lied, or made a  bad translation.  If everything is as the sources say, which may not be true, than my furthest back ancestor is a Sumerian king named Hablum, who ruled in the 2400s BC.  Thats over 130 generations back.  

Naturally this could be incorrect since even if the sources are valid there is a mathematical formula that dictates that mostly patrilineal lines are often wrong since a certain percentage of wives cheated on their husbands, thereby rendering anything beyond them incorrect.  Nevertheless, I still find it interesting.

Answer 4

This half-Bluegrass, half-Buckeye say depends on which side of the family.  My maiden name is anglicized German for "swift."  Bio dad is of German & Dutch descent.  Unsure of paternal grandmother's family tree except that she has German & Dutch, but paternal grandfather's grandfather immigrated with his family in 1844 to prevent his sons from being conscripted into the Prussian army.  We know they are from Fabbenstadt, Westphalia, orginally & settled in the Dayton, OH area.

Mom's side is English, Irish, Scotch, & Cherokee from the hills of southern KY.  A great-great-great grandfather came over from Ireland in the 1840's to escape the famine.  He married a half Cherokee woman.  In addition, a line on my family tree goes back to colonial times to ne NC.  That young man (probably the 2nd son of a plantation owner) left, moved to Ashville, NC, later to the area of KY where my Mom's family has lived for 200 or so yrs.

Answer 5

I've traced my family back to the 1700's to Scotland,. They were sailing people up to my great grandfather who was a sailmaker. The last seafairer in the family was grandad who skippered a ship. I still have sea air in my blood tho as I live near two coasts  one house  in Norfolk and the other in Cumbria.

Answer 6

My family, original Scottish McKaig, came to Pennsylvania from Edinburgh, via Liverpool in 1762 or 1763; the settled a 600 acre homestead in Beaver County (Hopewell Township) PA, now Aliquippa area; and the name became McCoy shortly after arrival;

I have an extensive family tree dating back to the 1500s I Scotland; and strangely almost everyone in the family married another Scot with one or two exceptions; all the way up thru my mother, who married a man who was born to a full Native American mother and Irish father.  

Family genealogy is very interesting and rewarding research.

thank you for asking.