Families with deep American roots sit on some of the best records in the world. New England towns recorded births, marriages, and deaths from their founding; churches, courts, and land offices filled in the rest. A line that reaches the colonies can very often be documented, person by person, into the 1600s — and for many families, that road leads to a Revolutionary War soldier, an early settler, or one of the Mayflower's passengers.

What survives

  • Town vital records — New England's civil registers, kept from the 1600s, centuries ahead of most of the world.
  • Revolutionary War records — service rolls and, above all, the pension files: applications in which veterans and widows narrated their own service and families, among the richest personal documents in American history.
  • Colonial church, land, and probate records — where relationships were sworn and property passed.
  • The Mayflower scholarship — the descendants of the 1620 passengers have been traced through five generations in meticulously documented published scholarship, giving verified "landing points" a proven line can connect into.

Proven, not presumed

Early American research has a particular hazard: centuries of enthusiastic family tradition. Many families carry a story of a Mayflower passenger or a Revolutionary patriot — some are right, some are almost right (the ancestor was real; the connection is to the wrong person of the same name), and some don't survive contact with the record. We document every generational link against original sources, which is the same standard the lineage societies — the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Mayflower Society, and their peers — require of applicants. If joining one matters to you, research built this way is the foundation an application needs; and if the tradition doesn't hold, we'll tell you what the record shows instead, which is usually a story just as good.

How far back can an early American line go?

Colonial lines commonly document into the 1600s — this is the natural territory of our Gold package — and immigrant settlers can often be followed back into English, Scottish, or Dutch records beyond, which is where Platinum begins. The free assessment will tell you which of your lines reach the colonies and how firmly.

Sapling.Family is a family-history research service led by Professor Cisco Bradley, a historian at Pratt Institute. Every project begins with a free assessment — we look at what records exist for your family and tell you honestly what can be traced, before you decide anything. See packages & pricing or explore a complete sample report.