Genealogy Chat

John No, you arent being mean and if I were Prime Minister, or Dictator of the World (LOL) then I would sort genealogical research into two types, enforcable by law. 1. That which is proven by certificate and/or church records and/or other documentation, all references and sources to be given in full. 2. That which you have done purely on the Internet/been handed down from your great great uncle who did the tree in 1891/copied from someone else's website. It would make my life so much easier! The Olde Crone

Don't know if this is relevant here but here goes as I have to get it off my chest. I think so though as we are questioning som trees. Just been on the record office where someone was asking for help and had had assistance which was a fairly obvious solution to something in the early 1800s but what annoyed me the 'requestee' then said how do you order the certificate? Simple and reasonable question if you are a beginner but the person has over 2800 names in their tree!!!! I for one would not like to link to that tree. Am i being mean?

Keith, you can't stop at two. If those two people are descended from Charlemagne, so are some of their cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, back to about 40th cousins. All the other descendants of everybody in the line. Zillions of people. William the Conqueror's wife was descended from Charlemagne (by 3 different maternal lines). So all the English Royals since then are Charlemagne descendants, plus all the royal bastards (Henry I sired more than a dozen, and gave them titles or married them to titles) But royal descendants aren't all royal or even titled, because the younger sons of younger sons slide down the social scale. You can take any medieval royal whose branch didn't die out, and trace thousands of living descendants. (All you have to do before 1600 is look up who inherited the property when each person died, and what relationship made them the heir. These things are recorded) Then for every one of those living descendants you've proved a line to Charlemagne

The oldest tree that I have seen has been reliably dated back to the Emperor Charlemagne and that is for 2 people in America - the info has been validated by the Garter King of Arms or some such person in England. I can believe those 2 but no others. Keith

Shelli - if it was a Jewish name it is possible to get back very far.

To be able to take a tree back that far, I think not.....

If someone has linked back to Adam and Eve, then they have simply copied huge chunks out of the Bible. There are pages and pages of A begat B begat C begat D, and they even give age at death (usually men were several centuries old). There are plenty of Greek, Roman and Middle Eastern writings that survive and many do give the geneaologies of prominant figures - but they were made to prove a point, not to be acurate. Some Anglo-Saxon writings survive too, also including lineages of kings. The problem is that even if you were related through EVERY important figure mentioned in the ancient texts, you would need to have mastered Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Aramaic, Classical Latin, Medieval Latin, Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Norman French to be able to read the originl sources, and be sleeping with some very influential people because most are sources untranscribed and not on public display.

Oh I have seen a tree with 60000+ names and as he got bored did his son-in-laws family and managed to get 25000 names in 3 months. I wrote an email to the site basically slagging it off and strangely enough my membership was cancelled. Want a laugh? Type Adam and Eve, genealogy into a search engine and you will find loads of trees connected to them. How to do it? Well get a connection to the royal family, fairly easy if you can make the leap with a servant or a similar name to an earl etc Eventually if you track this back you can get to the house of David and then Adam.

Bearing in mind that surnames have only relatively recently been in use and that I have found it impossible to work out which William Williams living in the same village in 1841 is MY ancestor, I don't see how anyone can get beyond about 1750ish with any real certainty. Not to mention the fact that about 10% of children's fathers named in records are not biological fathers! nell still waiting for the 2001BC census to be released online. I am sure that will answer all our queries, lol!

ITS A MIRACLE ! ! !

Hello Folks, It is now a well known fact that my ancestor Thomasus Cookus was the organiser of all the Roman expeditions into Egypt. Whence this information became common knowledge other poeple jumped on the Chariotwagon. My family are well known in circles unfrequented by common man. GGGGGfthr x 75 Uggusthomas and his son Uggusthomaswherethefkareu, had the first travel franchise on the planet with Jurrassic theme parks. So there, x u all Bob sitting next to the Jupiter in the next world. G'nite

I should explain this isn't one of my names. I was simply surfing trying to find anything on COULBY, when i stumbled across this site. I was SO amazed by it i had to share LOL

Shelly Unless it gives detailed refs, my advice is to forget it. I just cannot believe that there are any written records from 117BC! And, if they are dated as such..... The only possible, possible, tree which could go back IN THEORY this far, would be that of a member of the Orthodox Jewish Community - they have kept genealogical information from the time of 'The House of David'. Naturally, these records, where they exist, only include males. I sincerely doubt that ANY Orthodox Jew would post their tree on a Website, for obvious historical reasons - neither would they need to, as they would not be looking for any 'unknown' connections. You could send them an email, asking how they have verified all this - bet you don't get a reply!!! Marjorie

Well am truely stumped just looked at the tree ... they have one person on there dating -114 which i presume means 114 BC? And they have 25 .. yes 25 generations after this date!!!!! so at appox 25 yrs a generation I reckon they must be back to 739 BC!!!!!!!!!!

Heres my tree... Henry marrys Elizabeth Elizabeth marrys a Henry Henry marrys Elizabeth... So on n so on... Untill Henry marrys Elizabeth BC LOL Have fun all Gerri x

LOL Marjorie , nice one... Gerri x

Marjorie Love that story lol proves the point though doesn't it?

Shelly When I firsr started researching on the net, I found myself in Pedigree World Tree or whatever its called, on the LDS site. I was extremely excited to find my family there, going back to 809. Took me some little while to realise it needed checking - it was absolute and utter rubbish. 'The Poster' had 45,000 names in his pedigree. Exceedingly huffy by now, I emailed him and got the reply: 'With 45,000 names in my tree, I cannot be expected to verify all the information'. As far as I am aware, there are no written records extant before about 800 - and between 800 and 1150, written records are very rare. Any tree before about 1200 has to be speculation, guesswork and fantasy. My brother and his mate, in a fit of drunken giggles, compiled a tree going back to Adam and Eve and posted it off to My Offender. To their horror, some weeks later, thet saw that this IDIOT had tacked it onto his 45,000 names. Marjorie

Just been readin the site and there does seem to be a few royals in there!!! another quote from the site..... 'The Surname List contains over 2900 individuals and calculates the relationship with our youngest family member, ************, age 6. This report spans 155 generations, beginning with Adam and Eve. The individuals listed in this report are not all included in the family tree due to a software restriction of 99 generations.' All cerdit to these people as they have obviously worked hard, but just find it hard to believe Shelli

Shelli I think unless they had royal blood or were from a long line of politicians for instance, it would be a large stretch of the imagination to go back 2000 years. But then again I may be wrong. Victor