How far back can you go? What is the furthest you’ve gone back?

This is a question which pops up a lot. How long is a piece of string? there are many variables. Most people in England can trace back to the beginning of registration of births, marriages, and deaths in 1837, or the first household census in 1841.

Beyond that, it becomes dependent on parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials, in a good parish where the records survived the civil war and survived general wear, tear or loss,  these can go back to the 16^th century, and if your family stayed in the same parish, with good records, you would be very lucky. Many of these have been digitized now and are on the main genealogy websites such as Ancestry, Find My Past or The Genealogist. The further back in time you go, the harder the handwriting may be to read.

An unusual surname helps. Coming from a very wealthy family or aristocracy also helps because their names pop up in manorial records, wills, legal disputes, deeds, or marriage settlements.

It can become more expensive if you are having to examine records in an archive at the other end of the country to where you live, either in travel costs, or paying someone and / or the archives for images of the records.

The furthest back I’ve gone is with my own family, with my direct male line. There was a fair bit of luck in that my family had not moved very far and were within Suffolk and in parish records back to Somersham in 1726. From then on, as yeomen / farmers / millers, they were in manorial records for Chattisham which are held in Eton College Archives, who very kindly took all the photos and sent them through as jpegs for no cost at all, and then they appeared in Long Melford, Suffolk, which being a wealthy wool town, has very extensive records.