How far back have you got in your research?

Waitsian

Just curious to hear how far back everyone has been able to research and how diverse are they?

Of my 4 grandparents, 3 were of Irish Catholic stock so the earliest from those branches is 1796.

My paternal grandmother was of English stock so we have traced her ancestry back to the 16th century using parish, land and legal records. :cool:

The only direct ancestor I've discovered from outside these two islands was one of my 6 x great grandfathers, who was from Massenbach in what is now Germany. He was a Palatine, who left for England in 1709 and was sent to New York in 1710.

Hermy

So far my Dad's family appear to be Dublin through and through with the earliest record so far confirmed being a baptism in 1785.

On my mothers side I can go back considerably further.
Thanks to research done by some distant relatives of mine (for which I am very, very grateful) I can trace the Pelly branch of my mothers tree to 1360 in Dorset.
Both the Pelly and Moore branches of my mothers tree are connected to the Finucane's of Co. Clare whose line goes back even further according to the research of Philip Crossle and George Mott. I don't have an exact date but this line can be traced for nineteen generations before 1525!

Location-wise my mothers family travelled far and wide. One of her great grandfathers was a soldier in the British army based in India. Another great grandfather apparently left Ireland to seek his fortune in Argentina and was never heard from again. As independence loomed a lot of her family left Ireland and they can be found as far away as Canada and New Zealand. I also have one very interesting record on my mothers side - twin boys born on Ascension Island in 1864 - presumably because their father was in the Royal Navy.

L1011

1798 apparent birth from death certs. However that's with primarily online and GRO research - there's a lot of NLI and other sources to chase yet.

I've a bishop and a member of the sawdoctors in the diversity stakes but little unexpected geography. Only oddity is a family propensity to leave and come back - even in the mid 19th one branch emigrated to Newark and returned.

beardedmaster

My great-great-great-grandfather, born 1749.

.BrianJM

Early 1600s for paternal line and some of its branches. I'm Scottish so it's not surprising that most of them are from Caithness or thereabouts. At that point there was a suggestion that Viking ancestry is involved but no confirmation yet. Seems that the older the record, the harder to get.
Maternal line was not quite so rewarding, although we (my sister has done most of the work) probably gave it less attention. One stumbling block on that side is a great grandfather who was Irish. He joined British Army in 1858 and the only relevant info we seem to have is a calculated year of birth, father's name and birth place. There's a lot of Sullivans in and around Killarney.

Menas

My line pre-grandparents are all irish catholic small holding farmers so the furthest back is the late 1700's.

pinkypinky

In terms of time, I'm only back to the end of the 18th century on 2 lines. However, in terms of completeness, I know names/dates/details about all 8 great-grandparents, all 16 ggs, 25/32 on the gggs and working on the next generation, but have only details of 7/64, so that one may take some time!

L1011

pinkypinky wrote: »

In terms of time, I'm only back to the end of the 18th century on 2 lines. However, in terms of completeness, I know names/dates/details about all 8 great-grandparents, all 16 ggs, 25/32 on the gggs and working on the next generation, but have only details of 7/64, so that one may take some time!

Hadn't thought of looking at it that way - I've only got 14/16 on that generation so I may put a bit of effort in to that...

I'm not helped at all by my parents having been relatively older when they had me, my father's parents having been even older when they had him, and so forth - I hit the civil registration era wall a hell of a lot closer than my partner does!

Hermy

That's a good way of looking at it pinky. I've been mostly focused on my mothers family so Dad's chart, although full of names, is short of dates and details.
Having said that something I find hard to do is focus. I'll sit down with a definite goal in mind and minutes later I'm off the beaten track investigating some unrelated visitor with a funny name who turned up on the census. It's no bad thing to go a-wandering as it helps to have trivial things to mention when writing reports but that sense of completeness that I crave is not helped by my scatterbrained research.

Waitsian

pinkypinky wrote: »

However, in terms of completeness, I know names/dates/details about all 8 great-grandparents, all 16 ggs, 25/32 on the gggs and working on the next generation, but have only details of 7/64, so that one may take some time!

That's a better way of looking at it actually. I too have all 16 great grandparents, and a similar number to you of great-great grandparents.

MYOB wrote: »

Hadn't thought of looking at it that way - I've only got 14/16 on that generation so I may put a bit of effort in to that...

I'm not helped at all by my parents having been relatively older when they had me, my father's parents having been even older when they had him, and so forth - I hit the civil registration era wall a hell of a lot closer than my partner does!

I'm the same. My mother's father (born 1882) was 25 years older than my Nan when they married, and Mum was the second youngest of 11! :eek:

owenc

1705.

I can't find a connection to this person but the person is in the same area and with the exact same surname (which is rare here) so it is probably something like a G (7th) granda. Before him it was like 1750.

On my mums side, I got back to like 1850 or something.

paddysdream

Really only got into this family tree lark about a year or two ago.Have all 8 great grandparents (born 1840 to 1879 and died 1899 to 1956) and 16 great great grandparents(born from 1793 to 1854 and died 1865 to 1934).

All the earlier dates taken from either death records or headstones so I suppose a leeway of a few years should be allowed for.

As regards the 32 ggg grandparents have 14 definite ie records ,headstones etc and of the next gen. back ie the 64 ,have 4 thanks to in one instance someone elses research (they seem certain but ?) and in the other 3 cases baptismal records on rootsireland where its a very unusual name for the county and the townsland is given in the record(plus my mother, when promted! could say, after I had paid out for 4 or 5 records,shur I could have told you we were related to Johnny So and So cause his great granny was a So and So and so was your great grand? and shur wasnt that how they were farming that land now that you spent ages trying to locate in Griffiths Valuation.

Have to say its the most boring tree ever! no strange names ;eg the 16 surnames are Byrne x 4,Nolan x 2,Gorman, Mullins,Mcdonnell,Brady,Healy,Maher,Dempsey ,Dunne,Conlon and the only not so common one Cronley.
Each and every one were farmers in 2 or 3 adjoining counties and lived married and died in most instances in the same places all their lives.

Still suppose its nice to look out my back door and see the same sights my ancestors saw more or less 200 years ago (boring I know but it does it for me!)

Alicat

Earliest date I have confirmed by myself is 1805 for my ggg Grandfather.

However, we are related to the Guinness family so that has pushed my dates back considerably. The earliest member recorded looks to have been born in the 1600's but no certain dates, other than his death in 1725. I don't count that solely as MY research though. It was a collective effort from myself and a number of newly found relatives on another forum, who had all separately heard the rumour of a Guinness connection. We pooled our snippets of information together and managed to find it.

These results have a large hole throughout as my paternal Grandmother was orphaned/abandoned and grew up in a home, so no information there. I thought we had it for a short while but cannot be proven at the moment so I have to leave her tree blank.

6/8 G Grandparents
12/16 GG Grandparents
24/32 GGG Grandparents

RGM

Going by full (and maiden) names known:
16/16 GG-Grandparents
25/32 3G-Grandparents
7/64 4G-Grandparents
0/128 5G-Grandparents

The earliest actual confirmed record I have found is from 1825.

All but one of my third-great-grandparents are believed to be Irish Catholic, the one being a Scot.

At this point, I've turned to DNA testing to see what I might find that way. I'm not sure how much further I can realistically expect to go through traditional genealogy.

shanew

had never worked this out before... so if I have totals correct for my own tree, I have full details, i.e. birth/baptism, marriage, children etc, for all 8 gt-grandparents, and all 16 gtgt-grandparents, plus at least some details of 24 of my gtgtgt-grandparents, and details of 9 gtgtgtgt-grandparents. I usually branch out for lines, e.g. work back and forward for spouses of the children, uncles, aunts, lines for employers, colleagues even neighbours etc

The clues go cold for some due to them being very common names lost in the crowd in a parish, e.g. Byrnes and Doyles in Wicklow, running out of dates in RC records, or through lost CofI records for another branch, or in one case a mysterious absence of parish records for two lines before 1849 in a parish with records back to the 1750s, even though I know they lived on the same land back at least as far as the Tithes, and likely much earlier (think a church changing from parish church to chapel of ease might be the problem..)

The earliest confirmed Irish record I have is for an 1803 RC marriage in North County Dublin, thanks to a gtgtgtgt-grandfather with very distinctive name passed on to a grandson. Similarly for some other branches oldest inferred dates of birth are 1770s or so, and about the same for my English born gt-grandfather's line, and a separate English gtgtgt-Grandfather.

Mine are a mix of RC, CofI, Presbyterian and CofE

Hermy

Just totted mine up and I have the following:

16 of 16 gg-grandparents
24 of 32 ggg-grandparents
20 of 64 gggg-grandparents
7 of 128 ggggg-grandparents

Of course while I have dates of birth, marriage and death plus addresses and children's names for some, for others I just have a christian name from a census record or marriage cert. but it really highlights how much work is still to be done when looked at in this way.

paddysdream

As regards the records,earliest ones I have are for a marriage in 1824 with both addresses,witnesses and the brides maiden name plus both parties fathers names.

Earliest births are 1791(the above groom) taken from birth year given on headstone and on civil death cert(died 1871) or 1794,taken from a headstone plus the origional memory card and death cert. (died 12 06 1885)

jos28

I've gone back to 1822 and hit a very big brick wall !

shanew

a little uncertain, but as part of that problem parish I mentioned, I have a 'possible' earlier connection - a headstone in the graveyard of that now ruined former parish church with burials shown between 1763 and 1799, with the oldest calculated year of birth of abt 1705....

The line I believe is possibly connected to him, have the same relatively uncommon surname, lived a little later just over 2km away and are buried in the graveyard attached to newer church across the road....

Menas

I like this way of looking at it!

15/16 GG-Grandparents (tracing 'common' cork names is very hard!)
21/32 3G-Grandparents
6/64 4G-Grandparents
0/128 5G-Grandparents

The earliest born of the 6 gggg grand parents was born in 1765.

Ponster

15/16 GG-Grandparents
5/32 3G-Grandparents

Been at this for years now and I don't think that I'm ever going to fill in those blanks.

P. Breathnach

I'm disadvantaged if we keep score in terms of generations, because I am a generation or two older than many participants here. However:
16/16 gg-grandparents
13/32 ggg-grandparents (all on one side; one identification is tentative)
3/64 gggg-grandparents (one of whom gets in twice, so I could claim 4/64)

The earliest date I can fix is 1808 (2 baptism records).

As all my known ancestors were Catholics of modest means - tenant farmers, fishermen, domestic servants, labourers, and the like - I think I have done well to get as far as I have done.

Hermy

It's interesting reading this thread and thinking about when my mother and I started our project - long before the internet put so much information at peoples finger tips. Back then we were mostly reliant upon Joyce House and getting back as far as 1864 seemed like an achievement!

Ponster

Ponster wrote: »

15/16 GG-Grandparents
5/32 3G-Grandparents

Been at this for years now and I don't think that I'm ever going to fill in those blanks.

Quoting myself just to give people an idea of how I fared with my British wife's family (where census records go back to at least 1860) :


16/16 GG-Grandparents
29/32 3G-Grandparents
14/64 4G-Grandparnets
4/128 5G-Grandparents

Menas

P. Breathnach wrote: »

As all my known ancestors were Catholics of modest means - tenant farmers, fishermen, domestic servants, labourers, and the like - I think I have done well to get as far as I have done.

Catholic- Small holding Farmer - Common irish name. These are the three biggest blocks to us researchers IMO.

One long standing wall I have reached is where on my great grand parents marriage cert gives us my Great grand mother's Father's name.
Thomas Ahern.
Even knowing her name, his name and the name of two of her siblings ..AND knowing where they lived (near Rathcormac in Cork) I still cannot get a definitive track on that branch of the family.

I just need to convince my wife that cork is a lovely place to visit for a mid week break!

pinkypinky

Ponster wrote: »

Quoting myself just to give people an idea of how I fared with my British wife's family (where census records go back to at least 1860) :


16/16 GG-Grandparents
29/32 3G-Grandparents
14/64 4G-Grandparnets
4/128 5G-Grandparents

British envy: something some of my own ancestors would be very surprised at!

pedroeibar1

pinkypinky wrote: »

British envy: something some of my own ancestors would be very surprised at!

I know, it's amazing how good their records are particularly if one has an unusual surname. My earliest known ancestor is one living in 1473 (England) but I do not have his dob/dod, although I have details of his son and a photo of a painting of his grandson’s wife (1550). Of my sixteen ggparents I’ve 14 – all eight on my father’s, but only 6 on my mother’s side – two wives, both born 1790 - 1800 are missing, but I have another clue or two go explore. Periodically I say to my elderly mother how common the husband's names are, just to wind her up and to hear her say ‘My family lived in castles when your father’s lot were running around naked and painted blue’.
I’ve got only 10 of the 32 and about the same of the 64 but have many leads to follow up.

Ponster

pinkypinky wrote: »

British envy: something some of my own ancestors would be very surprised at!

I should have been more precise though and say 'English' as on her Welsh side you run into a problem as we have in Ireland. The records are there but the surnames are few and common. Thomas, Williams, Jones and Richards can often make up 60% of the names in a village making it often very difficult to determine which Huw Jones if your Huw Jones.

odds_on

My tally is:
4/4 grand parents
8/8 gt gd parents
16/16 2g gd parents
24/32 3g gd parents
40/64 4g gd parents
62/128 5g gd parents
56/256 6g gd parents
78/512 7g gd parents

But then, this is over 25 years work, over 18,500 people in my database of which I estimate some 85-90% are related.
Also a descendant of Dermot McMurrough, Strongbow, Kings of England, France, Spain.
My parents are very distant cousins - same parents about 19 generations back.

I have, just last month, found a 5th cousin living in Portgual

Hermy

We have a winner.:D

Seriously though, that is an amazing amount of work.
Well done odds on!

Waitsian

Ponster wrote: »

I should have been more precise though and say 'English' as on her Welsh side you run into a problem as we have in Ireland. The records are there but the surnames are few and common. Thomas, Williams, Jones and Richards can often make up 60% of the names in a village making it often very difficult to determine which Huw Jones if your Huw Jones.

Welcome to my world. Smiths and Bradys living in rural Cavan in the early 19th century. Yeah, thanks....!