How far can you trace your surname back?

[YoungDemCA]

When I say "surname", I mean direct ancestors on the paternal side.

I can trace my surname directly back to a man from Lorraine in the late 1600s/early 1700s.

[LTG]

2. In the search amazing things can be found.

Can trace the paternal side as far back as an individual in England in the early 1600s.

On the maternal side we can trace directly back into Tennessee and North Carolina in the early 1700s.

Hope to go and personally research old records and documents to push it back further. Did that during a trip to Nashville a few years ago. Among other records, photos, etc, I found a picture of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother from just after the Civil War.

It was an amazing experience. I also found a photo of the barefoot students in front of their one room schoolhouse. In that picture, among the students, was my Grandfather and all of his siblings. He was about 6 at the time.

I've found records showing members of the family fighting on both sides of three wars: the Revolutionary War; the Civil War; and WWII (in the Pacific).

When you start digging it is amazing the stories and pictures you can discover.

(edited to fix spelling errors and add details)

[pipi_k]

3. I've been able to

trace my paternal family name back to 1660, Normandy, France. Funny thing though...my maiden name started out in France as something totally different from what it is now, due to the practice of people taking "dit" names.

If I go back through my paternal grandfather's line through his mom, I can trace her family name, "Roussel" back to a man born 1644, also in Normandy.

And then my father's mother, whose maiden name was "Auclair" I can trace back to a man born 1603 in Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, Ile-de-France, France.


If I take a less direct route through the family tree on my father's side I can go back to pre-Conquest days in both France and England (like 1020), although I don't know how completely accurate they are.

[Homer Wells]

4. I'm stuck in Tennessee in 1832

My surname is Barnes, and my great grand-father was born in Sumner co, TN in 1832. All that is said of HIS father was that he was the "scion of an old Virginia family", and that he was "killed in the war". All of my looking in Virginia and in Missouri, where my GGF died have so far been in vain.

[Rosie1223]

5. One of my brick walls, unfortunately

Joseph (1810-1854) lived in Western Tennessee.

There were 2 migration paths there -- 1 up the Mississippi and the other overland via the Cumberland Gap. A fellow researcher is very insistent that Joseph came up the river but he cannot find any records that direction. I think he has made a faulty assumption. There are many with Joseph's surname in eastern Tennessee in the early 1800's but I cannot establish a connection. Frontier records --argh!

[csziggy]

6. Cardiganshire, Wales, 1838, when he married a Morgan girl

It's one of my brick walls. Apparently, he was born in London in ~ 1816 - or maybe in Wales, depending on which census I believe. No one of his surname other than him is listed in that Welsh town in 1841.

His father was not in that shire, or in Wales so far as I can find, and I don't know what part of England his people were from.

On the other hand, sorting out which Mary Morgan and her father, David Morgan, are the right ones is near impossible. Sorting John Smiths might be easier!

[applegrove]

7. My great, great, great, great, great grandfather in Scotland in the early 1700s.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. Direct ancestors in the paternal line, to Maryland, 1665.

(and possibly a generation or two further back than that). Surname, to Warwickshire circa 1350 (it's not common, and my colonial ancestor was probably from Warwickshire; it's almost certain the 1350 instance is an ancestor).

[sybylla]

9. Mid 1600's in Ellern, Hunsruck, Germany

I have several other lines back further in Germany, France and England. Unfortunately, there are even more I can't get back past the 19th century after 25 years of effort.

[Thor_MN]

10. 1880, but I can trace my paternal line back farther than that...

My great grandfather and his brothers changed the family name from Olson as it was too common. There are tons of stories about this happening, but mine is verified. In fact what got me interested in genealogy in the first place was an early internet search turning up a page in Swedish in which I recognized my grandfather name. It was the story of how his father and uncles changed their name. My grandfather had corresponded with a relative in Sweden and the story was written up. 1880 was when the brothers came to the US, so my surname was "Invented" (they took the patronymic form of their grandfather's name and dropped the s of -sen) in 1880. Everyone with my last name in the US is a cousin or closer.

Oddly enough a great grandfather on my mother's side was also an Olson, but kept his military name after service in the Swedish military.

That said, I'm more Norwegian than Swedish and the oldest ancestor I can trace was born around 1490.

[AverageJoe90]

11. My paternal family is supposedly rather old, but so far..........

I've only been able to go back to the mid-18th Century thus far, definitively speaking: William Ladd, b. ~1743 in Mass.; may have been a Revolutionary War hero according to the family(been a while since we discussed it though). I may have better luck over the next few weeks, though, as I keep digging.

Some others, though, on my paternal side, go back quite a while longer back than that.....maybe I'll post 'em here sometime.

[CountAllVotes]

12. 300 B.C.

How's that for "old" and yes, it occurs on both ends, father and mother! Who would have ever thought?

Source: This History of Ireland and many other books as well document this fact. eh?

[pipi_k]

17. Well how about

2,000,000,000 BC?


A cousin and I (our grandmothers were sisters) often joke that we can trace our family line (and all its troubles and quirks) to a a critter named "One celled Pierre", in France.

[dgibby]

13. Only back to my G.G. Grandfather, who was born abt. 1776 in either Md. or Va.

Some family sources think they have found my G.G.G. grandparents, but the dates and location don't fit. I'm beginning to think they were in the witness protection program! He and my G.G. Grandmother are my brick walls on my dad's side.

[TuxedoKat]

14. 1300's, I think

or maybe the 1200's. It's been a few years since I've looked at my records.

[me b zola]

15. Back to when Slovakia was Hungary

~and there where a few changes between. I have to do more digging, but my research indicates that my direct paternal line were nobility. My great grandfather who immigrated to the US at the turn of the century, his given (first) name is also one of the family surnames of the nobility of that area.

I have a lot of work to do on this line in the family. My paternal aunt and others were stumped, but they were over-the-moon happy to now know where and how to look in Slovakia.

[No Vested Interest]

16. My surname is the second most popular in Ireland, and the first name also common.

I have the family history back to arrival in US ca 1820.

But, as anyone familiar with genealogy and Irish history knows, the British forbad the keeping (and practice ) of RC records, and civil records for that period were few and far between.