Direct male line vs direct female line ancestry research?

About 2/3rds of my dead ends are ladies.

I go back to my 42nd great grandfather, Charlemagne, but some of the links are a little shaky and he wasn't a Pack.

The direct male line for my grandfather is a mess & I can only go back 2 generations. This is due to language problems because the Cyrillic alphabet doesn't translate perfectly with English. The place my family came from has been part of half a dozen , or so, different countries in the past 200 years. So depending on the records, who was translating, etc there is almost always a different spelling on every document.

My grandmother's line is a dream! Her father was part of a Scottish Highland Clan which has a very well researched & documented lines for both males & females going back to the 1600's.

In the overall chart, I have more brick wall grandmothers, that's for sure. As far as my mother's side of the family, that is where I started. She comes from two old, well-documented Rhode Island families and I inherited quite a bit of material. Then I started looking for everybody else and some were easier than others.

On my father's side the direct line stops with the immigrant, my 5th great grandfather. Many excellent researchers have been researching this line for years and we are all stuck. We are currently involved in a Y-DNA project and are hoping to find a break-through that way.

The surname challenge is only part of the equation. In truth, research depends on what records the ancestor left behind, what exists today, and how easy those records are to access. This all depends on when and where they lived, what kind of people they were, what they did, and bunches of historical circumstances since the record was made (like courthouse fires). Other research factors can come into play as well, like what information you're starting with, commonality of a name, spelling variants, and the ability to identify the right person from a group of people/records with the same name.

In my case, my mother's mother's mother's line is easy because the families were well documented in censuses, Civil War records, pioneer histories, wills, etc. and the records are available online. My mother's mother's father's line is more difficult because they tended to move to remote unincorporated areas with poor record systems, be rebels that avoided government records, have common names and use their initials, tended to do things just before records were kept of that particular life event in that place, and the records they did leave for the places/times are not as easily accessible in online collections. On my father's line I've gotten farther, not because the names are consistent, but because they lived in the same places for generations, and records for those places are excellent.

I have gone back about 400 years on my mothers maternal lineage, and on my fathers side

I have traces both his mothers lineage to the 1600 in Virginia and his fathers maternal line to about the same time.

The two lines that have been evading me are my Mothers Paternal line and my fathers paternal Great-Grandmothers line.

I have gone back 10 -15 generations on most of the lines of my family, but I also researcher by Surname and not necessarily by a direct lineage of either

This ability to trace people is entirely dependent upon the amount of existing documents available.

Hence, if the people did something worth writing about, or specific ancestors wrote about such people, you have a chance. BUT ALSO, it depends upon the culture. My maternal line is mostly New Netherland Dutch, and though they have plenty of surname problems (patronymics), Dutch women were allowed to transfer property and represent themselves in courts of law, until the English took over. As a result, there are plenty of records present for this matriarchal line. Furthermore, depending upon culture and level of education, often the women took the time to record family events and handle social affairs. Ulster Scots of the 1700's, usually Presbyterian, were literate, while their Irish Catholic counterparts often were not.

I'm only brick walled on the poor and the less educated family lines, both paternal and maternal. It's all digging for gold, but methinks you can have success on both lines regardless of the gender if you dig well enough.

When I started doing genealogical research a couple years ago, my goal was to trace my direct paternal line back to Europe. However, I've not been successful, hitting a wall in about 1824 with the birth of my 3rd-great-grandfather in Virginia. A couple weeks ago I hired a professional genealogist in Virginia to try to extend my paternal line. On my direct maternal line, I've gotten back to about 1811 with the birth of my 5th-great-grandmother.

The first line I tried to follow was my dad's male line, but I hit a roadblock that I can't get through at the ocean. Unchanging surnames do make it easier, but so do unchanging residences, and in early records only the head of household was recorded, so it's harder to connect women to our histories. There are so many variables that can make research challenging. My oldest documented relative so far is a woman, so I guess I got lucky with that one too! :)

I study a similar way! I carry mutually surely everyone who's appropriate. regrettably in certain cases even those who percentage a acceptance should not be attracted to helping you. The computer virus purely isn't there for some. family individuals tree study fairly is type of a tree, the farther you pass, the more suitable you locate, the bigger it receives. it ought to correctly be overwhelming even for researchers, so someone who's not that "into it" ought to not opt to get tied up with what they see because the more suitable stuff. that's a bummer, yet with a bit of luck you'll detect a way round the line blocks!

No I have got back on all my male lines further then the female lines........... mine are all in the UK and in the UK even marriage certs don't have both parents on just the fathers, so limited information........

After a certain date mainly fathers are mentioned on baptisms, not the mother , unless they are single women..........it is always a bonus to find a female mentioned before 1750ish, I have even seen some ministers just wrote, "female child baptised daughter of John Smith " in the parish book so it can be very difficult finding enough primary records for females...............................