Hi, I was reading some article about some guy trying to show he was related to everyone, and followed a link here. I thought it was a neat idea, but after filling in information on my immediate family, I realized that in many cases this is impossible.
I'm from the United States, and my ancestors all came from Europe, and I would guess most or all of them are traceable. My wife is from Cambodia, and written records from before approximately 1980 simply don't exist, as they were all destroyed during the Democratic Kampuchea regime under Pol Pot. After that period, many records (birth certificates and family registries) were recreated from memory. But from what I can tell, most records, then and now, have been falsified in some way - changing birth dates and moving children from one set of parents to another are both extremely common in Cambodia.
For example, my daughter was born in Phnom Penh in 2010, but the birth certificate says she was born in Stung Treng (my wife's home town), about 400 km away. I tried to get this corrected, but for some reason that could not be explained (I'm guessing there is something political where they are trying to inflate the population of Stung Treng), nobody involved (including my wife) wanted to change it. My wife's birth certificate says she was born 2 or 3 years (she doesn't even remember exactly) after her actual birth.
Anyway, I will try to find what information I can on my wife's side of the family, but it will basically all be heresay. My side should be easier. My father's family was from Poland/Germany (borders have changed... it was a Polish-speaking section of Germany at the time) and my mother's family was from Italy (Sicily) and Hungary/Romania (borders have also changed... a Hungarian-speaking section of what is now Romania, I am told). I don't know anything about finding records in those countries, but I guess I'll find out.
I think my mother is interested in this sort of thing, so I will see if I can get her to join too.