Is it possible for me to trace the origin of my ancestors?

Question

Is it possible for me to trace the origin of my ancestors?

Answer 1

It depends on what you want...  As several people have already noted, your ability to trace backwards in time through records will be affected by who your ancestor were and where they lived.

But if you want a biological ancestry, there are several for-profit companies that can help you using an analysis of your DNA.  Essentially they can give you a good idea of where your maternal or paternal ancestors came from.  That all said, you still can't get at things like where your paternal grandmother came from for reasons having to do with how we inherit our genes and mitochondria.  Still... really kinda cool to do.

Answer 2

my grandma did

Answer 3

Yes.

Go to Ancestry.com

or LDS.org and get started now.

Good luck

Answer 4

The DNA tests only give you a rough idea of what genes came from where. You might be Irish and share a gene with people from Iraq, but does that mean you had an ancestor from Iraq, or that your ancestor and their ancestors once lived in the same area, say Russia, and then moved to Ireland and Iraq? the tests don't tell you that, not yet anyway.

Answer 5

yes but you need the help of dna scientists to accomplish it. it has just be known that thomas jefferson's ancestors go back at least to the phoenicians.

Answer 6

It depends. If your ancestors came from a European country, then there is a good chance that there are records going way back. My grandfather's wife traced his ancestry back to around 1400, using Polish church records. Of course, as a previous poster said, many wars have destroyed areas of Europe and any genealogical info as well.

On the other hand, many Americans will have difficulty tracing their ancestry. For instance, there are people now and in previous generations who do not know who their father was. Lots of people have been in orphanages, or adopted, and never knew who their birth parents were. Lots of people in the past were illiterate, or came from cultures without a writing system like most Native American peoples, and as such had very few if any written records. And most African Americans are descended from slaves, who also have very little written records.

There are genetic tests that claim to tell you what your ancestry is. However, they are not 100% accurate, since there is a lot of genetic variation within cultures.

Answer 7

I say no it is not possible! People didn't start keeping records until the last century. I saw on the news a woman claiming to be the oldest person alive, but she could not prove her age because people didn't keep birth records in hospitals until the early 1900's, how could anyone do anything but speculate and take your money! My great great grandfather had the same problem except that in his case he was an indian and they didn't keep records either, good luck not getting scammed. The best you can do is go back a few generations and most families go back way before records were ever kept.

Answer 8

You can but, it's a slow and very tedious process. Don't expect anything in a hurry and you have to be dedicated. If you can afford it, join Ancestry.com they're a big help for many thing. Also Ellis Island.com these will all lead you to others.

   You can get into obituaries of States for free this helps. When it comes to foreign Countries your going to hit a dead end. So much was lost to the wars over there. We were fortunate enough to find a parish priest whom, for a small fee, would look up relatives and the names we had. He lucked out and found several names that led to others.

   This is the way it went, for almost five years and were not quite through yet but, we've made contact with relations throughout the United States that thought they were alone.

   Go for it. Oh! and, keep records, don't trust anything to the pc. write everything down, names, dates and places.