Put your surname into the search box at FTDNA (upper right). See if there are others tracking the same last name. With luck, there will be.
Then if you match up with someone else’s paper trail you *may* be able to leap back in time by piggy-backing off their tree. I added 200 years to my tree when I did this.
My Tree goes back FOREVER!
It goes through the Royalty of Europe, so there is no question as to the “heritage.”
That is through my father’s line. My mother’s line is something else again.