So last month I got an email from FamilySearch.org that they were rolling out a new Famous Relatives page. It shows famous historical figures that connect to my tree in some way, usually a distant cousin. I finally had some time to check it out today and, wow, there are a lot of connections. My maternal line connects back to quite a lot of people; I need to add more connections on my father's side to see how this list grows. What they've connected for me so far includes:
- Leaders
- James Madison (4th cousin, 9 times removed)
- George Washington (5th c, 9 r)
- John Quincy Adams (5th c, 6 r)
- Millard Fillmore (6th c, 4 r)
- Ulysses S. Grant (6th c, 6 r)
- William Henry Harrison (6th c, 6 r)
- Calvin Coolidge (6th c, 5 r)
- Rutherford B. Hayes (6th c, 5 r)
- Abraham Lincoln (6th c, 6 r)
- James Garfield (7th c, 4 r)
- Theodore Roosevelt (7th c, 3 r)
- Benjamin Harrison (7th c, 4 r)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (7th c, 5 r)
- James K. Polk (8th c, 5 r)
- Richard Nixon (8th c, 1 r)
- William Howard Taft (8th c, 3 r)
- Thomas Jefferson (6th c, 8 r)
- Zachary Taylor (8th c, 6 r)
- Warren G. Harding (9th c, 1 r)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (9th c, 2 r)
- Diana, Princess of Wales (10th c)
- Franklin Pierce (8th c, 4 r)
- William McKinley (9th c, 3 r)
- Herbert Hoover (10th c, 2 r)
- John Tyler (8th c, 5 r)
- Winston Churchill (6th c, 2 r) (I wrote about this earlier)
- Harry Truman (11th c)
- Inventors and scientists
- Isaac Newton (4th cousin, 9 times removed)
- Eli Whitney (5th c, 8 r)
- Thomas Edison (5th c, 4 r)
- Edward Jenner (6th c, 8 r)
- Wilbur and Orville Wright (both are 7th c, 3 r)
- Philo T. Farnsworth (8th c, 2 r)
- Charles Darwin (8th c, 4 r)
- Samuel Morse (8th c, 4 r)
- Jonathan Browning (6th c, 6 r)
- John Browning (7th c, 5 r)
- Robert B. Ingebretsen (9th c, 1 r)
- Alexander Graham Bell (11th c, 2 r)
- Entertainers and artists
- Henry David Thoreau (5th cousin, six times removed)
- Emily Dickinson (6th c, 4 r)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (6th c, 5 r)
- Walt Disney (7th c, 4 r)
- Buffalo Bill (7th c, 3 r)
- John Wayne (7th c, 2 r)
- Shirley Temple (7th c, 3 r)
- Mark Twain (9th c, 3 r)
- Bing Crosby (8th c, 2 r)
- T. S. Eliot (8th c, 3 r)
- Cecil B. DeMille (8th c, 2 r)
- Marilyn Monroe (8th c, 2 r)
- Lucille Ball (9th c)
- Katharine Hepburn (9th c, 2 r)
- Agatha Christie (9th c, 2 r)
- Buster Keaton (9th c, 2 r)
- Elvis Presley (6th c, 3 r)
- Jackson Pollock (9th c, 2 r)
- Robert Louis Stevenson (11th c, 2 r)
- Edgar Allan Poe (12th c, 1 r)
- Audrey Hepburn (13th c, 1 r)
- Trailblazers
- Elizabeth Tilley (Mayflower passenger; 11th great grandmother)
- John Howland (Mayflower passenger; 11th great grandfather)
- John Tilley (Mayflower passenger; 12th great grandfather)
- Joan Hurst (Mayflower passenger; 12th great grandmother)
- Richard More (Mayflower passenger; 1st cousin, 13 times removed)
- Ellen More (Mayflower passenger; 1st c, 13 r)
- Jasper More (Mayflower passenger; 1st c, 13 r)
- Mary More (Mayflower passenger; 1st c, 13 r)
- Ann Franklin (first female newspaper editor; 5th c, 9 r)
- Amelia Earhart (7th c, 1 r)
- Helen Keller (8th c, 1 r)
- Florence Nightingale (11th c, 3 r)
- Robert Peary (11th c, 3 r)
- Robert Baden-Powell (12th c, 1 r)
... and one athlete: Gordie Howe (12th cousin, once removed).
I had known about Winston Churchill already, but the list there showed a different lineage than I knew, so there is definitely more research to be done there. And, with a few family members who worked for Disney in the 1940s, it's cool to see that Walt was actually a cousin. However, the most surprising to me is that, according to FamilySearch, I'm a Mayflower descendant!
I know where I'm gonna be looking next....
