can any of you lot trace your family? I ask because while browsing IDF I noted that nice American woman Sally can trace her family tree right back to Alfred the Grate. That is with provable although she seems to decline to so do..

I would have guessed that this was a bit impossible as records that far back would not exist.

Am I wrong here. I ask as I genuinly do not know.

I have been tracing my family history Steve and so far I have got back to the late 1700s. I too find it hard to believe that she could get back that far !

The first person on a Family Pedigree I have was born 1647,
this Pedigree was made up to 1894, and through trying to find some more on it I have found a 2nd Cousin, my Grandfather and his Great Grandfather were brothers, he has been searching the family name for 20 years and I was the first person he made contact with, I also had a lot of old photos I did not know who they were and he has named most of them.

Alfred the Great was in AD890, seems a long time ago to me

Why are some folk always descended from a person of note? It amuses me greatly. I don't suppose the common folk had children, there are so many who think they are related to someone important!

The ones that have themselves hypnotised and regress to be Lord or Lady so-and-so, or
a King or Queen, make me snort at their gullibility!

I heard a story once of a lady who was researching her family tree and found that one of her ancesters was an axe murderer. She stopped the research there and then - and then there was a case of a man researching his family tree for 30 years only to find out after all that that he was adopted !

Was Alfred the Grate the one with the fire in him?

I've got my father's line back to a marriage in 1740, I assume his space ship landed just a few years earlier.

Most of the written records only go back as far as the 1500's I believe

Steve wrote:can any of you lot trace your family? I ask because while browsing IDF I noted that nice American woman Sally can trace her family tree right back to Alfred the Grate. That is with provable although she seems to decline to so do..

I would have guessed that this was a bit impossible as records that far back would not exist.
Am I wrong here. I ask as I genuinly do not know.

As this same nice lady often brags about her Irish ancestry, I was perplexed to know Alfred the'Grate' could be said to be one of the Irish. But I suppose she had two parents like everyone else, one descended from the English and the other from the Irish.

Nobody ordinary can trace their ancestry that far back on both sides. There was no continuity of record keeping from that time. She's an eejit that one I think!