Don't buy into those "we'll trace your ancestry" offers. They'll make up a generic lineage, knowing you have no way to prove otherwise, then they'll take your money. They operate the same way as the ones who "trace" your family Coat of Arms. It's almost impossible to trace families any further back than the 1400s unless it has been well-documented. The reason is, up until the 1400s, people generally didn't use surnames. Surname usage originated either from the town people lived in when they moved to a different area (as in "Kent" - with "Kent" being a town in Britain, for instance), from the trade you practiced (as in "Smith" - "blacksmith", "goldsmith", etc), or from the ruler of the kingdom you lived in - you would have just adopted his name. Names also change through the years. This comes from the lack of education. Even as recent as the early 20th century a college degree wasn't necessary to teach grade school and high school. If a child had a name that was difficult to pronounce, the teacher would just record it in her book the way it sounded to him/her. Thus, you learned how to spell your name - whether it was correct or not. It became correct from that moment on.

My ancestry has been traced (documented) back to 1465 Switzerland.

I've been doing it since I was 18 (now 71). As to how far back, depends on the family line, but none of them go farther back than the late 16th century. Word of warning: a lot of the family lines that Ancestry and other sites will push are pure baloney because anyone can post anything they want on those sites and the site will thereafter push it as legitimate- they don't check any of that stuff to see if it's accurate, therefore, bogus lineages are a dime a dozen. Fake "research" to join hereditary organizations like the DAR was a genuine thing, and for all I know, may still be. I once disproved a lineage for one of my ancestors published by an organization called "The Order of the Crown of Charlemagne" by contacting them and asking for a copy of the membership application showing the documentation submitted. When received, I checked all of it out and it was completely fake, 100%. Not only was the "evidence" fake, the membership committee tasked with verifying it obviously never had, probably because the applicant was a doctor plus his wife was head of the membership committee. So, bluntly, don't accept anything until you've actually seen the evidence and verified it yourself.

Depends on what branch of my family being discussed. Some only goes back to my great grandfather, another goes back several generations.

My father's side of the family has a genealogy that goes back at least 13 generations up multiple branches. My mother's side... not so much. They immigrated to the USA fairly recently and I'm only aware of two or three family members from the old country.

All the way back to three of my great-grandparents on my mother's side, so about three eighths and back to the early 20th century.

I can trace my roots back to Abraham.

A professional geneologist traced my mother's side of the family back to 15th. cent. Germany to a village named Katzenellbogen.