Is it possible to find ancestors from earlier than the 17th century?

Question

I know there's places like Ancestry.com and such, but is it possible to find even earlier records? Such as from the 17th century and past that??

Answer 1

Ancestry is only one of many websites.. and understand, ALL RECORDS are not always online.

Yes..records go back but the question is WHERE AND WHO. The royal family in England is an illustration... their ancestry can be traced, for the simple reason that it was needed to know. The same is true of many other royal or noble families. In England, for the "common" person..parish records begin about 1600. OTHER types of records do survive..it simply depends on the type of document, the person (place) involved, and of course, has the item survived? The Domesday book is an example, but you have to know why it was done..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book

Other countries have their own situations. China has extensive genealogies, not all of them survived the Communist regime. One of my lines goes into Spanish royalty/ nobility (intermarried into English nobility).

Nothing in genealogy is ever guaranteed. You define the person, time and place..THEN evaluate which items may be searchable.

Answer 2

That really depends on WHERE you are researching and WHO you researching..... ancestry.com would not be a place I would look for information it is just one website and commercial I want to see real records and lots of them that commercial website has a tiny amount compared to what I can see elsewhere and for free.... websites are not the best place and unless you know what you are doing websites can confuse research and they certainly encourage people to think research is easy and it is OK to copy and paste without verifying, to accept their hints............. I see many online who claim lots of things .........but just taking ONE country in the UK , England



Parish registers were started in England in 1538. A law was passed ordering the clergy to record baptisms, marriages and burials, and that they should be written down in a book after the service on Sundays, and in the presence of the Churchwardens. Before this date there were no records, except for a few created by monks who recorded the events for prominent families. Many churches, however, did not begin keeping records until a further notice was sent out in 1558, and even then, many did not comply.



In 1597, Queen Elizabeth I decreed that all existing records should be copied into "fair parchment books, at least from the beginning of this reign". There was considerable opposition. Many churches complained that they could not afford parchment books, others began the task, some started with the 1558 records, some omitted large sections as the task was too large, and some did not start at all.



Some of the early 1538 records (re-written in 1597) still exist, but it is not at all unusual for the registers not to have been preserved. Many were lost, and it is quite common to find no preserved records for a parish until a much later date. Most of the parish registers are now stored in a County Record Office, although a few are still in the individual churches............ and in 1837 civil registration began....so you get an additional record to the church............. so when people come on here and claim they have an ancestor born in 1475 because familysearch.org tells them or ancestry.com tells them so...it is made up information or they claim their ancestor came over in 1066 with William the Conquer...prove it, no one had surnames then and you have a gap of 20 years before the first census ( Domesday book) which names very few people, only those with taxable asserts and then a 500 year gap of little or no personal records, which means no connecting family records, no females mentioned, few still had surnames....so which John is yours? out of 7 John's in a village or is it the one in the record? Who knows, it can't be proved and reality means there are not records in general as people didn't read and write so there was not Wills written............. so reality means you will get back 500 years in England which has a very good record system...one or two will get back on one line further but generally not the majority

Answer 3

Sometimes. A lot depends on where the ancestors lived, and what they did that might have generated some type of record. Free sites such as Family Search have some record collections that date pre 1700. In Europe alone Family Search has nearly 150 collections with records pre 1700 from various European countries. https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1®ion=EUROPE&dateRange=dateRange1



Your ancestors generated documents such as land deeds, wills, probate, and sometimes birth, marriage and death records. These documents can be difficult to find because most are not digitized online, but LDS Family History Centers located all over the world have microfilm for many of these old records.

Answer 4

As noted, it depends on where you need to search. Belgium is a pain in neck, whereas the Netherlands (except for Amsterdam) has a wealth of land records, wills, etc going well back into the 11th century. France, Spain, Italy and Portugal have excellent records kept by the Catholic Church which are available on film from the LDS Family History Centers. France has civil registrations back to the 1600s for most of the country and the 1400s for Paris and the Norman area. Britain has excellent records back to the 11th century, and sometimes even earlier if you're related to someone of great stature. Likewise, Italy is wonderful about having deep records available, as most people didn't move often. The further east you go, the more you rely on the hope that the records are in the process of being transcribed. Poland, for example, has wonderful records, but you need to go there to find them. Russia is far more hit and miss because of frequent migrations. If you are lucky, you're Dutch. Otherwise, you need to spend some time at your LDS Family History Center to find out what has been filmed and what other resources they can make available to you.

Answer 5

Yes, it is possible. I have gone as far back as before Christ. Of course, that is with only a few lines.



The 17th century is the 1600s; 3 of the Mayflower passengers were my ancestors; all Mayflower passengers have their descendants and ancestors published.



Of the 14 families that settled Germanna, 3 of the families are known to be my ancestors. Some of their ancestors have been established back to the early 1400s by such greats as B. C. Holtzclau.



So, IF you can trace your ancestry to the 17th century, you will most likely find some of them in published genealogies going on back several centuries, even to Charlemagne (another of my ancestors).



So, start with: Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, Volume Nineteen, Thomas Rogers. Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass. December 1620. Originally compiled by Alice W. A. Westgate; Revised by. Reeves. Published by General Society of Mayflower Descendants 2000. Copyright 2000 by General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 4 Winslow Street, Plymouth, MA 02360. Edited by L. M. Kellogg and others. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.



Burke’s Landed Gentry, Burke’s Dormant & Peerage, Burke’s Peerage of American Presidents, Debrett’s Peerage, Oxford Histories, et al.



Lineage & Ancestry of HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales by Gerald Paget. Pub: Skilton, Edinburgh, 1977, Vol. I, p. 56.

Royalty for Commoners by Roderick W. Stuart, Pub: Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1993, Subtitled: The Complete Known Lineage of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, King of England, Philippa.. Reviewed in TAG, Apr 1994 by Dr. David H. Kelly. Note: Poor, p. 103.

Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1760 by Frederick Lewis Weis, Pub. 7th ed., Genealogical Publishing, Baltimore, 1992 or “Ancestral Roots of 60 Colonists Who Came to New England, 1623 - 1650, Ed. 1 - 6, J H Garner.

Ancestry of Richard Plantagenet and Cecily deNeville by Ernst Friedrich Kraentzler, 1978.



And other such books.

Answer 6

It is possible, if your ancestor was more than what was considered a peasant and left records. Even then there may be church records., That is one of the places new researchers seldom look in.