Eight generations up the male line, to an ancestor who joined the 1st New Hampshire Regiment in 1775 and stayed through Sullivan's Expedition. I've joined the Sons of the American Revolution. On mother's side (she's first generation American) back to the late 1500's.

German side researched back to the 1500s, US version back to 1750 arriving on the Royal Union from Rotterdam (been there and toured the harbor), and heavily researched. Wife is working on hers is working on her Mayflower connection, although, direct line was the mid-1800s. Fascinating hobby, it keeps her busy.

There is a 400-hectare farm in northern Sweden that has been in our family since 1558.

My dad had our family name, Bell, dated to about 1770's in Georgia. I'll have to look into it more.

1736 America via Rotterdam, "<"Alsace, "<"Switzerland, but it is a bit sketchy before that.

First gen Chinese American, so I guess none of those ancestry sites will do me any good . . .

So, I did some digging around on FamilySearch.org, followed one path and found pictures of some very old relatives. The fact that there were pictures seemed odd, so I researched that person, who, it turns out, was a descendant of King Edward I of England. Hmmm... wouldn't that mean I am also descended from Edward? A little digging, Googling, and I was able to tie the family tree, as entered on Family Search, to show that my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather would have been King Edward I.

The entry on the bottom right is Edward Plantagenet I, aka Edward I, King of England.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8U9ar790V30" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Very cool Lee!

I need to do some digging. I've always heard we are tied to the Douglas clan in Scotland one dads side. Haven't heard anyone chasing my moms side out of the hills of northern Arkansas though...

One side's paternal lineage I was always told "came from Holland..."

Year's later I found to be very similar to yours except Alsace would be replaced with "near Stuttgart"....(our name was Americanized along the way). A former co-worker's wife was THE guru and had a web site long before these commercial ones....never met her but exchanged numerous emails years ago.

Other side's paternal....VERY similar...including name change....(big thick book actually published decades ago by an ancestor w/ pictures etc. Fascinating stuff).

Here is my question. How do the websites or services or reference books or whatever that people consult for this stuff, get their data? What's the chance that it is wrong?

A little side note... it's estimated that 99% of people of English ancestry are descended from Edward I. Odds are, if your ancestors are from England, you can make the same connections.

Family Search is run by the Mormon Church. If you watch the video of the tree, you'll see quite a few exclamation points. Those are alerts that something may be off. Many times, it's just "Married before age 12," or dates that are off. For instance, "Born after father's death." Some of those points are easily explained and others are not. I think the more research is done, the more accurate it becomes. My father's line used to point to Ireland. But there was a couple of links that didn't make sense. Eventually, someone changed a connection that lead to Scotland instead. So, yeah... one estimated relationship can change things drastically.

Unfortunately, much of the data is wrong as soon as you go back a few hundred years. Family Search is the 'retail' version of the Mormon database. So it is their version of ancestry.com etc. Their core data is the old IGT database which was comprised of hard data from gov't records & church records. Census data for many countries didn't start until 1841 - 1851. The church records - weddings, births & baptisms - contain many spelling & data errors. I did a few stints transcribing micro-fiche records for IGT & it isn't easy interpreting photos of smudged records from 200 years ago that were written by a parish priest with nothing but verbal information from peasants.

With Family Search, they merged a huge amount of questionable data from other sources which is guesswork at best.

Ian

Not only is it guesswork and incorrect date, what about infidelity etc.? Nice to think your ancestors were faithful and truthful, but without modern DNA, Birth Control, etc, I'd suspect most family trees have quite a few broken branches.

Well now you have it as I have always said "Little tree dwelling creatures."

Didn't we all originate in Africa?

Some guy in modern-day Israel about 2,000 years ago. :p

[QUOTEHere is my question. How do the websites or services or reference books or whatever that people consult for this stuff, get their data? What's the chance that it is wrong?][/QUOTE]

Exactly the problem; as people do their "research" they often fail to verify/validate the information, don't check the numbers, do the math, check the records. In the first version of my family history (great uncle actually wrote a book) many of the references he supplied were just wrong. Later research by others, fortunately, were able to correct those errors. As my wife has been working through her family genealogy using Ancestry, she spends hours (and I mean hours) searching obits, newspaper articles, contacting elderly relatives, census data...you name, before she even considers publishing her data. Unfortunately, not all are that conscientious. She said, "it's the dates that kill you," and oh the surprises she finds. :)

Rob - thank your wife & tell her that anybody that is serious about genealogy really appreciates her diligence.

And Lee - I am glad that you pointed out the exclamation marks. My tree to Boudica is filled with them. :D It says that I am related to most of the royalty of Europe so the errors must be bogus, right? Charlemagne, Louis I, Henry I, Richard III . . .

Ian

We've gotten as far back as the early 1300's on my Dad's side. Direct descendants of blacksmiths to King Edward of Germany. (hence the cutlery trade ever since) Every single person with the same family/last name has been accounted for since then. Crazy..

census records are the key and are very good
the gov is/was very interested in getting it right
and eazy if an odd [uncommon name] like my mom's
and people did not move alot esp landowners
smith or jones who were not landowners or stayed in one place get far harder to do a eazy census trace and sure can get BS links

mormans were obsessed with records and have a very good collection site
most of the web sites are based on the mormans data