Who we are starts with the stories we hold onto — the ones told at dinner tables or scrawled in scrapbooks. But stories can only stretch so far back, and some are only half-remembered across generations. Beyond a certain point, everything depends on records. To understand how that paper trail began, it helps to ask why family trees were created in the first place.
Why We Started Tracing Family Trees
The earliest family trees were created not out of sentimentality but for practical reasons: to assign land ownership, dictate inheritance, and establish social standing. Over time, recordkeeping expanded beyond nobility, though. As churches, towns, and governments began documenting baptisms, marriages, deaths, and property transactions, non-nobles began to appear in written records. This laid the groundwork for some of the earliest surviving record systems.
The Earliest Surviving Ancestry Records
In England, parish registers were ordered to be kept beginning in 1538 during the reign of Henry VIII. Those registers created one of the earliest continuous systems for recording baptisms, marriages, and burials. In Catholic regions of Europe, the Council of Trent in 1563 set requirements for recording baptisms and marriages. In many parts of Europe and Latin America, church registers remained the primary records of births, marriages, and deaths before governments stepped in to establish civil registration systems.
Across the Atlantic, federal recordkeeping began with the first United States national census in 1790. That census recorded the name of each head of household and listed other members by age and status. The 1850 census expanded to include the name of every free person in a household, along with their age, occupation, and place of birth. This shift made it easier to connect one generation to the next through nationalized, systemized documentation.
A Starting Point for African American Families
For African American families, the 1870 census marks a starting point. It was the first federal census to list formerly enslaved individuals by name in the general population schedule (the formal name for the manuscripts comprising the census). Records created during Reconstruction can also provide essential links to the past. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, generated labor contracts, marriage records, school records, and court documents between 1865 and 1872.
Similarly, the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company maintained banking records that frequently included personal details such as age, residence, occupation, family members, and, in some cases, birthplaces.
How Emigration, Immigration, and Migration Impacted Recordkeeping
Families who migrated left a different kind of paper trail, one shaped by ports and border controls. Federal passenger arrival records document persons processed through a port of the United States from 1820 onward. These manifests frequently list people’s age, occupation, last place of residence, and their destination. Naturalization records, which are commonly held in federal, state, or local courts, offer additional details about an individual’s origins and citizenship status.
Immigration records weren’t always just names and dates. For many Asian American families, especially those who lived through the era of exclusion laws, the paper trail is unusually detailed. Case files from the Chinese Exclusion Act era (1882-1943) include everything from personal testimonies to comprehensive family histories — even village names left behind in the places they fled.
For Native American families, tribal enrollment records and Bureau of Indian Affairs databases are smart places to start. The Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, commonly known as the Dawes Rolls, were compiled between 1898 and 1914, and remain an important source for tracing lineage within those nations.
Were There Records Kept in the Areas That Weren’t Always “America”?
In the American Southwest and other regions formerly governed by Spain or Mexico, land grant records and Spanish colonial church registers can also provide documentation. Together, these records show that migration, displacement, and citizenship were documented in different ways — but still documented nonetheless.
How These Records Help Us Understand Our Family History
Looking at records from different years and places often clears up uncertainties in family lore — even if the places changed names or borders shifted. A surname spelled one way in one document may appear slightly differently in another. An address in a census can explain why a later record shows a move. Over time, those entries form connections, making it possible to trace relatives who lived far away or long before anyone in the family was telling their story.
The same systems once used for taxation, citizenship, land ownership, and church administration now provide the documentation people rely on to reconstruct family history.
How to Build Your Own Family Tree
MyHeritage brings these historical records — more than 38 billion of them, to be exact — into one searchable place. By entering what you already know (names, dates, and locations), you create a starting point.
MyHeritage then searches those historical records and family trees from around the world to automatically identify potential matches. Instead of searching one archive at a time, you receive record matches and hints that can help extend your tree, confirm relationships, and connect ancestors to their documented histories.
To start building your family tree, visit MyHeritage.com.
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