[Vigilanteman]

If you really wanted to be related to Mary, Queen of Scots, as a distant cousin rather than a descendant, chances are pretty good that you could prove the connection if you can trace colonial ancestry to pre-1670 or so.

An interesting thing about almost all of the Puritan era genealogies (1620-1670 or thereabouts) is that they are only 4-5 generations away from the Plantagenet royal lines.

The Plantagenet dynasty, of course, fought the bloody War of the Roses over which branch would rule England only to yield to the equally dysfunctional and much shorter lived Tudor dynasty, when Henry VII was victorious at Bosworth Field.

The Plantagenet's had dropped scores of illegitimate children (along with a lesser number of the legitimate variety) into the bloodlines of British Isles, many of whom can trace their lineage back to the most reprehensible English monarchs like John I or Edward I, who were famed for spreading their seed about.

One of the few positive contributions of the Tudor line was to make appointments based on merit rather than lineage as the rival Plantagenet's greatly outnumbered the Tudors and generally did not get installed into positions of trust until after the reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch.

While some of the Plantagenet line displayed loyalty to the House of Stuart, especially James I, who wanted to pacify and unify the country, a great many more rebelled against the excesses of Charles I and Archbishop Ladd, the first great wave emigrating to the new world as persecuted puritans in the 1620's and 1630's and the second after the restoration of the House of Stuart in the late 1650's thru 1670's, when the House of Stuart was finally booted out for good and the American colonies became as much a dumping ground for undesirables expelled from the old country as a destination for religious refugees.

[muawiyah]

The very oldest extant European genealogies run back to the third century among the Welsh. The oldest date I've heard of was 245AD and there was a name associated with it.

There are some Scandinavian royal lists (not really genealogies) that run back to King Frosty ~ but there are, alas, several King Frostys.

Spanish Jewish genealogies, kept safely in Russia I understand, a full copy actually at University of Moscow, run back into the early Middle Ages. There's a university affiliated facility in Cincinnati that has a full copy of that material ~

The big problem is in America. This was an incredibly huge and empty place back in the day, and almost everyone was illiterate. Records weren't kept.