For me anything before about 1750 is pretty murky and the records are harder to find and confirm
My Irish side only goes back to the late 1700s/early 1800s, but I’ve been able to trace the German and English sides back a bit further than that. The problem, especially with the Irish side, is that names keep being reused, so I’ll have Robert James had a son named Robert, who had a son name James, who had a son named Robert James. It just gets really confusing.
It’s even worse when there’s another Robert James in the next village who married their village’s Mary Smith and all their 10 kids are also named any possible combination of these 4 names.
And you only realise it because one Mary Smith can’t have 2 Robert James (Jr.) a month apart.
Yup! Also, my last name was spelled differently and was apparently pretty common, so that makes it even more confusing.
In the 70s my great uncle tracked our family back to the 1600s in Germany, and linked our family to one of seven brothers who came to America in 1733.
He typed it all up with a typewriter (!!) and had enough copies printed that all of his and his brothers’ grandchildren could have a copy.
