All of us are descended from a chain of ancestors. Who our ancestors are is usually lost through the mists of time. This book is a catalog of those special families who happened to carefully preserve their lineages. These unique families have preserved continuous family lineages going back over 1000 years. What's more, these families still have living descendants today. This book is not meant to be family trees, but more of a tour through history of some of the world's best documented families. WHY these families preserved their family documentation is the most interesting part of the story. Some families did so because of self importance, others for religious reasons, still others because of a unique occupation. We walk through tiny slices of worldwide human history with them as they come alive for us today.