Tracing Family roots

[gilmore]

And just cause someone else says that you have a connection, doesn't make it so. My mother has been doing our family tree for years, and doesn't believe it unless she has authentic documents in her hand. She has found many errors in other people's reconing. To date my earliest verifiable ancestor is 1664, but some of the fanciful ones get me back to Longshanks (which now gets me kicked off of X-marks)

Adam

It's an unfortunate fact that the further back you go genealogically, the more time you spend sorting out other people's errors rather than doing original resarch, but that's just the way it is.

As to Longshanks, many if not most people now living in Scotland are probably also his descendants. His grandson's, Edward III's, are certainly well into the millions. A genealogical wit once called him "the father of the British middle classes."