Quick Questions #1: Ancestry

[tamaranth]

Inspired by a reference in Route 66 AD to Egyptian priests at the time of the Roman Empire, who claimed to trace their ancestry back 10,000 years:

How far back (in years) can you track your family?

Can you think of anyone who can track their family back before the Norman Conquest?

Comments

[rich-r.livejournal.com]

My mum's traced her side (the Cornish side of my family) back to the Norman Conquest fairly easily (helps that my gran's maiden name was Prideaux, which is a fairly old, insular family name in Cornwall, and owned most of the Duchy at one time or another, and others have done plenty of research in the past) - and she's made a little progress beyond, into some murky depths of Norman/Viking kind of records, but it gets so vague she's given up around 950AD.

My dad's side peters out in Scotland around 1600 though, as one 'Douglas MacDouglas son of Douglas' is fairly indistinguishable from another in the records...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

950AD?!?! Am fascinated ...

[rich-r.livejournal.com]

I think it's that 'part of a wealthy land-owning family class' thing that means there are records, usually of the type 'John Prideaux donated four acres of land to the monastory which was gratefully received on this day'.

Unfortuantely the register lists something odd happening in about 1750 - it goes from Lords, Captains, Merchants, Overseers to Paupers, Labourers and Dockworkers. So although it would appear to have been a very well off family for several hundred years, it was all lost in a couple of generations in the 18th Century...