Written records
 

If written records only go back to 1524, how can i know who were my relatives like a century earlier then? Im biracial, half american indian and half european... How can i take it to the next level then? Who can help me take it to the next level?

So have you already traced your relatives back that far?

If you haven't, I wouldn't worry about that yet. You may find you don't have any lines that you can take back as far as the 16thC.

You can't.

A very good friend lost all family records when her house was bombed in WW2. With extremely common names and no clues to the family's origins, she became expert in all sorts of records, but wasn't able to take her tree back.

With any tree, you can only say it is accurate if you can prove the parents at every single stage. Miss out any step: in this century or four hundred years ago, and your tree is a fantasy.

Perhaps it would be better to concentrate on the parts of the tree you can do rather than worrying about hypothetical situations.

We all have to begin somewhere and the enjoyment from this hobby is every small step you make. I have just discovered the identity of the father (my great-great-grandfather) of my great-grandmother who was illegitimate. I never thought I'd manage that.

Some branches you will get completely stuck on, whereas others branches might be far easier to take back.

Start asking forums such as this one for help on individual people in you tree, working backwards generation by generation to avoid errors, and enjoy the journey.

If you (eventually) manage to trace one line back to a famous person from history (what is referred to as a "gateway ancestor"), you might find that there is more information available about that person's ancestors than there is about most people from that time. But of course you might never get to such an ancestor.

Also, some European written records go back much further than 1524.

But how can i know who were my relatives like in the year 1305 if written records just dont go that far back? Should i ASSUME that they were originally native americans? If my family tree only goes back to the early 16th century, who were my ancestors prior to that?

If there are no written records then no one can know. We all have brick-walls where a time machine would be useful.

If you are serious about tracing your family tree, then start with your parents and see how far you can go back. Until you try, you will never know.

It is extremely likely you will not be able to construct a tree going back to the beginning of written records in any country, no matter what date those records began, so why worry about even earlier periods?

You say you are half European. Do you know which countries these ancestors came from and in what time period(s)?