Nothing is going likely to be 100%. About the closet to 100% would be the royal family of England that essentially had all genealogy, birth, marriage, death and succession documented. Outside of them or maybe some other royal dynasty in Europe, you are not going to be 100%. In the US you have it pretty good with census record up to 1850. Before 1850, the US census did not document each family member in the household, but just gave you a number. If your lineage comes from the south, and it is in the 1700s, apart from Virginia, record keeping was terrible. I guess they were too busy developing frontiers, fighting Indians and wild animals, and surviving the wilderness and the elements to worry about documenting a record. You may have some land records. Up north, well established courthouses and church records makes it much easier.
My lineage goes through John of Gaunt on one of my branches. Fortunately it is a well documented line with the noble Alston and Browne families of England.
Someone mentioned: "Has anyone found out they have family that wasn't to nice? The stories I could tell."
My do diligence in trying to find out what happened to an ancestor of mine in Horry County that just disappears after the 1850 US Census and is gone by the 1860 Census, finally did payoff in searching newspaper articles just before the 1860's. As I found out, my 3rd great-grandfather was going to receive land from his father-in-law Enoch Stevens (my 4th great-grandfather) in Horry County, when Enoch found out that his son-in-law was going to turn around and sell the land, so Enoch cancelled the deal. Well that infuriated my 3rd great-grandfather, so with his friend James Higgins (Huggins) they went and got drunk, went to Enoch's house, drug him out in the front yard, and beat and stabbed him so badly, that he died 13 days later, but he was able to identify his attackers before he died. They determined that James Higgins dealt the deadly blow with the stock of his gun, fracturing Enoch's skull, and he was the one who stabbed Enoch. My ancestor in court was determined that he did assist in the attack, but he brutally beat Enoch's 2nd wife who tried to stop them, beating her to conscienceless, nearly severing a vein in her neck, and causing her to lose an eye.
Well James Higgins (Huggins) got the death penalty by hanging, and a newspaper article I found said it took place in Feb 1860 with a crowd of 5,000 people watching in Horry County. I guess my 3rd great-grandfather must have plea bargained his way out, as I cannot find out if he did any time yet.
So there is a family secret that never was passed down, or my great-grandmother and 2nd great-grandmother took it to their graves.
