How far back can you trace your ancestors?

[Morticia]

My mother's side: 1450's (She's related to sir Francis Drake)
Father's side: 1500's. (My grandmother is very fond of Genealogy and owns a TON of documentation regarding both hers and her ex husbands (my paternal grandfather) lineage.)

[gokupwned5]

On my father's side, we've gone back to the early 1600s. On my mother's side, we've gone back to the early 1500s through her French ancestors, but one of those ancestors (Anathoire Lemond) may have been the grandchild of a minor French noble (Hector de Montrichard), according to a well sourced tree I found on Geneanet. If that is the case, I'd be able to trace my lineage to many European royals via the Dukes of Burgundy and counts in Burgundy, Lorraine, and the Holy Roman Empire. I'm taking this with a grain of salt though, because the owner of the tree I found has yet to send me the record confirming Hector's connection to Anathoire.

[Vasconcelos]

I've traced my paternal line up to mid-late 1700s, all of them were from roughly the same place my father was born (give or take a couple of kilometers) and have traditionally been millers by trade. As they owned the local mills, all the millers in the region I've found on the records share my family name, eventhough some are only relatives. Even to this day we're nicknamed 'the millers' by the townsfolk. I might be the first (recent) male member of the family not born in our region of origin.

[TheOldNorth]

I've been into genealogy for many years, but quite helpful were a few relatives who had already written a few books, which traced some not so distant ancestors to known characters from XVIII century Brazil, and from these people it was not too difficult to trace back to the first settlers.

An example of what happened to me: upon researching my genealogy, I traced my ancestry back to my great grandfather (Antonio Moreira Junior). I went to the town he was born (a very small town lost in the interior of Brazil by the way - no more than 2000 inhabitants and with only two streets - take into account my great grandfather was born in the rural area of that town). I looked for his obituary, found it and then looked for the name of his parents. Later I found three books, by close relatives, with his name Antonio Moreira Junior, and the name of his brothers and sisters listed. From their names it was easy to go back much further back in time, since it was already recorded and registered by other peoples in the past. I traced my ancestry to Baltazar de Morais de Antas (1535-1600), a settler of very early Brazil (XVI century). 15th generations between me and him (Brites Rodrigues Anes was the daughter of a Portuguese couple who settled in Brazil according to Pedro Taques de Almeida Paes Leme, our main genealogist from the XVIII century).

15 generations between me and Baltazar de Morais de Antas:



This is the genealogy of Baltazar de Morais de Antas, it goes back quite a great deal in time (plenty of information on him in the link below), it goes back to the early days of Portugal:

http://www.buratto.net/doria/AntasMoraes.pdf

I've traced my ancestry back to the founding members of nearly every dynasty older than 500 years in Europe.
On my mother's side I can go back to Charlemagne, Somerled, Alfred the Great, & Rurik.
On my father's side, I can barely go back to Danish peasants

[Daco Celtic]

at least to the 1970s

[ModernMaskil]

Early 1800's is the farthest back I've seen but most of my tree only gets to great grandparents in 1900's and 1910's.

[IrisSelene]

It's a mystery tbh.... My own family has not much clue and they even try to avoid talking about it whenever I ask questions... All I could get is that two of my great-grandparents were bulgarian, one croatian, two romanian and three hungarian...

[Tigranes]

We wuz kangs!

[Borealis]

2 years

[aja675]

Late 18th century-early 19th century. BTW, while tracing my own ancestry by looking for mentions of my father's surname on Facebook, I found this picture with my great-grandfather and my great-great-grandmother in it: