No Records Before 1400? Just a question out of curiosity. It seems there are virtually no records

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Holmes Moody said: I just wonder why there seem to be few records prior to 1400. Is it a system capacity issue? Is it that no one kept official records before that date? Purely a question out of curiosity; not a problem. FamilySearch is a great system.

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Jordi Kloosterboer said: The churches only started collecting info for baptisms, marriages, etc after 1500s for most European countries I think.

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Holmes Moody said: Thank you. I would have assumed that absence of an official recording and collecting mechanism was the principal reason.

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A van Helsdingen said: Generally, you are lucky in European countries to trace back to 1700. Older records often exist only for the wealthier and aristocratic parts of society.

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Holmes Moody said: Point taken. I had noticed that in the distant centuries everyone was Sir or Lord or Baron or Knight or Sheriff, etc. I concluded that only the nobility and royalty kept records, and until the 1700s (apparently) that was true. Thankfully, the church decided there was value in recording everyone. Thank you for your input.

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A van Helsdingen said: Yes, only in the 16th century did both Protestants and Catholics start keeping records for the entire population. But many of these earlier records haven't survived.

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Holmes Moody said: I have observed that even royalty records had a stopping point about the 14th century. I have encountered instances of King So and So with Unknown Parents, and I know that historians must have that information. Surely, kings did not just pop up from unknown sources. It is an interesting and rewarding pastime, to be sure.

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Gordon Collett said: Here is a very nice blog article by James Tanner that gives a pretty thorough discussion about research prior to 1400 that has very interesting information related to your question:
https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2...

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Holmes Moody said: The article is extremely informative and has given me an understanding of records and sources that I should have thought about but did not. My own "research" rides on the shoulders of others, as I have not attempted to do anything original, just use the work of true researchers to build a tree of my own ancestors. Thank you very much for providing the link to this valuable article.