How far back can you trace your family history?

[honeychile]

I receive a lot of "buying opportunities" emails from various genealogical publishing companies my mother or I patronize. This was from the Genealogical Pointers Company, as a sales blurb for a CD on Mayflower lineages:

"We could hardly let the month of November go by without running a segment on the Pilgrims. You'd be surprised just how many Americans have Pilgrim ancestors. If you can trace at least one of your family lines back to 17th-century New England, you may find yourself among the estimated eight million living Americans of Mayflower descent. In other words, roughly one out of every 35 Americans is of Mayflower ancestry. How would you like to have those odds the next time you play a lottery?

"The sheer number of Mayflower descendants is all the more remarkable when you consider that only 26 of the 102 Mayflower passengers left progeny. Moreover, if you are trying to connect to one family out of the many thousands of families who were a part of the entire first generation of New England immigrants, your odds of having Pilgrim ancestors get even better."

Thought I'd throw that into the mix, with Thanksgiving this week. And no, I can't link to my email. Even if I could, I wouldn't.