Ancestors before the 1400s

Mailani Warth

I heard when I was younger that at this time we should focus on work for our ancestors that needs to be done after the 1400s. What if we find a name that needs work done that lived before this time like the 1300s or 1000s/1100s?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The chances of finding a valid connection that far back are effectively nil for most places and times and families. Heck, even the 1400s are extremely unlikely, most of the time.

Gordon Collett

1) Most likely someone else has already found it and taken care of everything.

2) You need to have confirmed every single connection from you to that person from real documentary sources that you have personally read in the original language after having confirmed their authenticity.

3) You can't base your relationship on any of the unsupported trees floating around the internet.

4) You can't base your relationship based on any of the downright fraudulent trees that are out there. (I ran across one once that shows my wife is a direct descendant of Odin.)

5) Your time is much better spent working on post 1700 lines where you have a much better chance of finding true information.

Ottley BQ

@Mailani Warth -- The most recent information from Help in FamilySearch, in answer to the question, "Can I request ordinances for people who lived before A.D. 200?", is as follows:

"Article Id: 972 December 15, 2021

Vital records for people born prior to A.D. 200 are generally considered unreliable, except for some Asian countries. As such, Family Tree does not qualify people who lived before A.D. 200 for temple ordinances unless they are from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, or Singapore.

In Family Tree, the ordinances of people who lived before A.D. 200 in other places of the world are listed as "Not Available.""

Here's a link for your review: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/can-i-request-ordinances-for-people-who-lived-before-a-d-200

You may also want to review the information link at bottom of the article entitled, Related articles, "Individuals for whom I can request temple ordinances".