How many generations back before you stop caring?

**Creoda** · 01-17-2022, 08:07 PM

1. For individual ancestors in your tree
2. For minor ethnicities in your ancestry

For me it is after about 5 or 6 generations, 1/32 or 1/64 of my ancestry. That mostly goes back to around the early 19th century, which is conveniently when reliable records began to be kept. It also tends to be the limit of family memory. After that point I don't find genealogy very interesting, for anything that's less than 1% of your ancestry. Then there's the the common non-paternity events, which cast a shadow of doubt over all old genealogical lines.

**Colonel Frank Grimes** · 01-17-2022, 08:23 PM

As far back as I can go. Spain is great for genealogy because the church kept good baptismal records starting in the late 16th century. Unfortunately, Napoleon's army ran amuck in the area my family is from, and so much of that is lost, and, on top of that, secular records for where my father is from were mostly destroyed in a fire in the 1900s.

If you had an ancestor who was a captain in the tercios during the 16th or 17th century, it's like having a gold mine of information. There were people whose job was to check a prospective captain's family background. They wanted to make sure there was no Jew in the family tree.

**RogueState** · 01-17-2022, 08:35 PM

7 generations

Alexandro · 01-17-2022, 08:49 PM

10+ generations.

Although to me anything less than 1/8 is just a curiosity and not something that factors into my identity.

**Rafael Passoni** · 01-17-2022, 09:10 PM

10 +

mitalit · 01-17-2022, 09:12 PM

XIX onwards, which in my case would be between the 6th and the 7th generation.

**Smitty** · 01-17-2022, 09:30 PM

I'm definitely interested in genealogy as far back as the records will take me, although the names and dates start to seem a bit repetitive at some point, especially where vital details are the only information you get. Anything beyond the 1600s starts to seem a bit dubious to me, and it's pretty hard to get that far back anyway, even in the best of circumstances. Add to that the fact that those ancestors have potentially millions of descendants and are your family like half the country is your family. But it's still interesting to me. And if recordkeeping went back to the time of Christ or earlier, I would happily keep researching forever, I think.

**Creoda** · 01-17-2022, 10:38 PM

Originally Posted by Smitty

I'm definitely interested in genealogy as far back as the records will take me, although the names and dates start to seem a bit repetitive at some point, especially where vital details are the only information you get. Anything beyond the 1600s starts to seem a bit dubious to me, and it's pretty hard to get that far back anyway, even in the best of circumstances. Add to that the fact that those ancestors have potentially millions of descendants and are your family like half the country is your family. But it's still interesting to me. And if recordkeeping went back to the time of Christ or earlier, I would happily keep researching forever, I think.

It's certainly more interesting for deep-rooted Americans, as every line can potentially be traced to an arrival from somewhere different. For Europeans, once you get a few generations back, you know your ancestors were in the same places since time immemorial. That's when it's better to think of local genepools than individuals.