How far back has your family tree been traced?
Mine goes back to the mid-1700s. It cannot go any further as the church were all the records were kept at the time was burnt down, so the story goes, by Russian troops.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I've lost track of the number of ancestors I have that married first, second and third cousins. Sometimes the relationships between mates was not quite that close but they were still related within a few generations.
Even further down the line people are related more than they might suspect. My husband's parents were from Minneapolis, both for several generations. My father's parents were from Escanaba in Upper Peninsula Michigan and my mother's family were all from central Alabama since the 1820's (give or take a decade).
I still find lines that cross between my ancestors and my husband's ancestors and between my father's and my mother's ancestors. I've lost track of the common ancestors between my husband and me - it's a pretty good number especially when you consider that at least half my ancestors left the North before the American Revolution.
People tend to think that their family trees are discreet, independent from others but they are not. There are overlaps everywhere. Just the other day A DUer posted about one of their ancestors, a 9th great grandfather - that man is also my husband's 9th great grandfather! Who would have thought?
We ARE all one family! 
In my case my father's family was interested in genealogy in the late 1800s. We have letters when my great great grandfather was researching his lineage - one from a cousin that discusses why the spelling of their surname was changed three generations before. Another is from a great aunt (born before 1800) with information about that generation and a sibling the had disappeared (It turned out he was just estranged from the family and he turned up in the records in Ohio).
My father's mother had enough research completely to join the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1911. When my mother married into the family she wanted to prove her family was just as good so she began her genealogical research in the 1950s.
Mom was lucky to a certain extent - her ancestors all moved to the part of Alabama where she grew up in the 1820s and 30s. So we'd go visit her parents and spent summers traipsing around cemeteries taking pictures of tombstones or helping Mom look up deeds and wills in the courthouse. Mom was pleased that she could show up her MIL - Mom ended up with more patriots than grandmother had, LOL.
So when I work on my genealogy mostly I am verifying what Mom and Grandmother already knew - but they had no access to original census pages, just to census indices. Since both of them were more into their "patriots" they often stopped when they found a Revolutionary ancestor so I get to look up a lot of people before that.
Then I married and my MIL is really into genealogy. She was involved in publishing a book with every person with her maiden name who lived/lives in the US. She had files and files on my husband's ancestors and bought her first computer in the early 1980s in order to organize her families and to get online to correspond to others. She only stopped when the ancestors arrived in North America - but she did little with siblings and only researched direct ancestors. I have her eight boxes of research and I'm trying to take those lines back to the Old World.
So I had decades of other people's work to build on when I started!
30 years - pfft! 
Mother was adopted so good luck huh?
Well, I found out who her real mother was and sent a card to a first cousin I found and as it turns out, said cousin has written a book going back to pre-1750 America. Seems I'm related to Daniel Boone of all people. He was in North Carolina at the same time my Cherokee relations were still there prior to the removals of the Eastern Cherokee to wherever they could be dumped!
When you reach a point like this, it becomes fairly easy to trace back being a famous person is involved.
You never know what happens when you get into researching a family tree. All sorts of things come up and for me, most of them very helpful and good too plus finding a whole family I never knew I had is a big deal to me! 
Mary Bryan, sister of Rebecca. I do have a picture of her (Rebecca) I found somewhere. If I find it again, will send it to you.
I've done quite a bit of reading re: Rebecca. Seems she had a child that was not that of Daniel Boone, rather his brother while he was away hunting.
Daniel Boone knew of it and his reply was something like, "Its a Boone and that is all that matters".
Also a physical description I have of her too. They owned Bryan's Station around that same place. I think we must be cousins it seems.
Hello, cousin!
and yes, the claim by her is that these same Howards do descend from the same Duke from England named above. 
It must be the same people! And here we are still today!
Hello cousin and wow do I have a fascinating story (!!) !! 
She was my great grand mother 5X removed. She was married to a Howard and my grandmother was also a Howard and that was my mother's given middle name as well. Seems even though she was given up for adoption, they wanted her to know that she was indeed a Howard hence this same connection to the Duke of Norfolk! again ...
What a small world we live in eh? 
That's very cool! One connection is amazing enough, but two? Wow! You never know where you'll find cousins, I guess.
I read back through information on the Howards that I have. It's part of another genealogy, but it might be interesting to you. I'll PM that.
I'm still researching this link and that surname does *ring* a bell for some reason!
Never traced my father's side of the family. I know my paternal grandmother was first cousin to Pope John the 23rd, so obviously, a good Italian family going way back. My paternal grandfather came from Lebanon, but we lost track of the family in the 1980s when Hezbollah took over the Beqaa Valley and our Christian family was either killed or converted to Islam to save themselves. They'd been pretty hard-core Catholics 
...then it gets a little muddy
I helped start it several years ago along with another DUer, though it's been awhile since I participated...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1156
I live in the real world
because there were no other females so a little incest was required until people could wed daughters instead of mothers..... 
Seriously, I was on a flight to Hawaii arranged by a military family member, tickets purchased by the same means as for a group of Mormon National Gaurd members on a major "vacation" in the Pacific islands at government expense, before they retired and would have to pay for their own vacations. So I was stuck on a flight between two of these warriors in Hawaiian shirts, one a professional genealogist. He shared his customers family tree with me, extremely proud of how he was able, using the Bible, to show his customer his family all the way back to Abraham without a missing generation. I was more scandalized by their blatantly obvious abuse of the system to organize a group Pacific pleasure jaunt at Utah's military expense. Obviously, the Utah National Guard was corrupted by these high officers. Maybe that is a lot easier to do when you begin with magical reasoning for reality.
As far as I know, which is kind of ironic, as I have spent most of my working adult life as an archaeologist. 
I did research my last name (Scottish) and found I am the descendant of a shipwrecked 11th C. viking prince in northern Scotland. 
Or so the story goes.
Since my family research pretty much is done except for long distant ancestors I sometimes do genealogy for friends just to get a chance to look at records less than 300 years old.
One of my mother's caretakers was interested so I had write down what she knew about her family. She knew parents and grandparents on her mother's side but not much about her father's family. I took that information and traced his family back to South Carolina where they were freed after the Civil War. One of her lines was more exciting - they were freed in the 1840s and I managed to trace them to that point. She was thrilled.
Some friends knew little about their families and now that they are having their first grandchild they are interested. I looked up what they gave me and have traced their lines back, some to when they first came over. One of the more exciting men in the lineage was a blacksmith and helped make the chain that was put across the Hudson to block the British from sailing up the river (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Chain).
It doesn't take much to get started these days, parents and grandparents are a good first step.
Who'd you say is looking for 'em?
I am reported to have Choctaw ancestry and in fact there is an untraceable line right at that point. Otherwise it's intriguing. We tap into Welsh and Scottish royalty at some point and then there are scrupulous records.
My favorite outcomes are that on my paternal grandfather's side the original American immigrant was "George the Jacobite" who was captured by the British during that uprising and shipped to America, presumably to get rid of him. He was only fourteen so is thought to have been the servant of a soldier rather than a fighter. And there's Henry Owings, who was a Tory. Given that it's likely that other relatives were part of the secession and Confederacy, we apparently have a fine habit of fighting for the losing side.
Don't tell Hillary.
On my father's side, it's back to around 1240. On my mother's side, I think around 1400. Both families have been in America since the early 1600s, and longer than that for the Native American relatives.
