When you are able to trace your ancestors back to Europe, the church kept vital records such as births, weddings, and deaths. Many of those records survive today.
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True but except for the nobility— records of births weddings and deaths only start in 1500’s and 1600’s. My understanding is that this was one of the results of the reformation.
Then in Ireland, they (Catholics I think) blew up the records house in about 1922. Destroyed nearly a thousand years worth of vital records.