Originally Posted by
genejockey
A few years ago, Mrs. GJ got really into Ancestry.com, so I started working on my family tree. On both Mom and Dad's side we know lines going back to the mid 18th Century, but others, like the Smiths, first appear in the 1850 Census, which was the first to record really useful information. The problem I found was that while it was pretty straightforward finding male ancestors, female ones sometimes appeared out of nowhere.
I went down that rabbit hole a few years ago. I hit dead ends when a marriage record identifies the wife as Marie (amerind) or simply amerind. French dude married a native woman; they didn't even record her native name. People born in the old world and died in the new are hard to definitively trace back because death records are typically vague about birth. So I'm probably descended from a lord but then again maybe it was a serf from the next town over. 🤔