That is pretty cool, TheNerd. I’m just going off of family lore, though. I don’t have any paperwork to back it up.
I got me a coon-skin cap though.
mr dressup told my friends and i that we were his surrogate children.
that’s all i have.
It looks like we have something in common Ashtar.
I’m Cecil Adams’ bastard love-child too! (by a different love)
Unless he comes in here and denies it there is no way to prove I am not.
Then you’re of course related to Henry Mills Alden, who was also, I believe, related to Aline Murray, who of course, as we all know, married Joyce Kilmer, who is my great-grandfather.
What, you didn’t know that? Well, you do now. I’m also related to Fred B. Kilmer, who worked for Johnson & Johnson for a shit-long time and got some patents there, and to Billy Kilmer, ill-fated Redskins quarterback who is third on the all-time list for rushing TDs by a quarterback. And then there’s Val Kilmer - do I need to explain about him?
And Penelope Stout, who did very little except to get almost killed by a Native American after she got to the US (what were the colonies, if that, back then).
Then there’s my grandparents, who founded a school in Northern Virginia. However, they’re not that famous. My father’s mother (same as who founded the school)'s father, however, was (is?) Fred Frieseke, Impressionist painter. So that’s always a cool thing.
Another one coming out of the woodwork is David Hillis, who works for NASA and has two patents so far, and his mother, who’s a columnist for the Miami Sun, if memory serves.
How odd, Anake. When I saw the thread title, I thought to myself, “oh, I could post about how I’m supposedly descended from Leif Erikson”. It’s our interesting little family story - who knows if it’s true or not. I guess when my great-great-whatever came to this country, he changed his name from Erikson to … well, something not even CLOSE to that, which is a convenient explanation for why “Erikson” shows up nowhere.
Famous people? Um… I don’t really know… Dad’s side is a lot of farmers and Mom’s is stuff that I don’t know though there are a lot of Lawyers, Psychiatrists and Teachers in her siblings and a couple of Priests a little farther up.
One of my Great Uncles (Great Great? I dunno) could have gone to the olympics is he had practiced and stuff but he became a priest instead. The only sorta famous person that would work in my Grandfather the Honorable Hugh J. MacDonnell. He was a Supreme court judge in Nova Scotia before he retired.
That’s all the ones I know of.
**sniff…(mutters under breath)Peasants
William the Conquerer
Charlemagne
John Paul Jones
Alfred the Great
King Edward I
Malcolm III of Scotland
Hugh de Spencer - Earl of Winchester
Most of the signers of the Magna Carta
Robert Walton - landed with Wm.Penn - settled Philadelphia
Of course, some idiot had to come along about 400 years ago and just fuck it up for the rest of us, so we are just ordinary folks now.
Well…
my great-aunt used to be married to a Dallas Cowboy.
my fourth cousin three times removed (or something like that) is NASCAR Winston Cup driver Dave Blaney.
So… nope.
My great-great-uncle Sam Lambert was president (or something) of the NEA and number 13 on Nixon’s hate list (or something).
Okay, so my grandmother told me this one time and I don’t really remember the details.
My great(x?) grandfather was Samuel Crowley, the first man killed in the Revolutionary War. His widow was granted a special commission by the House of Burgess (in Virginia).
There is a monument to him on the banks of the Ohio River; I forget the exact place.
Bat Masterson is my great uncle or something along those lines.
My maternal grandmother shared some lineage with Rose Kennedy.
Tommy Bishop, former British rugby player and former captain/coach of the Cronulla Sharks (Australia), is my uncle. See info on his illustrious career here.
I hope someone here knows vishwanath anand. He’s the World chess champion of one of the two federations (NOT PCA).
Well, he’s my sister-in-law’s second cousin. He probably has hundreds of people riding the gravy train like me…
Well, the Hatfields from the Hatfield and McCoy fued.
Miles Standish, and it is my understanding that he was an ass.
My husband is related to the Roosevelts.
And I am possibly related to Matt LeBlanc of Friends.
There is one more and he is a jewish comedian, but his name escapes me right now.
I have no idea about my dad’s side of the family. All my grandmother will say it that there isn’t much to talk about so she’s not going to. I do know that the family name was changed, and that they were once land owners in Germany. Even a town there named after them. VonHarm Germany.
I have a fourth cousin x times removed who was captain of Germany’s Prinz Eugen for a spell during WWII.
I have one uncle who was a college president off and on for over twenty years. (He kept retiring and they kept bringing him back.)
His brother was a chaplain at Stateville in Joliet for several decades.
One of my ancestors signed the Point Elliot Treaty. Third mark, right under Chief Seattle.
And allegedly (I haven’t seen the evidence myself), Robert the Bruce.
According to family apocrypha (gotta love oral history 
), General Cornwallis was exceedingly overfamiliar with the upstairs maid, which resulted in another direct ancestor.
However, the ancestor that really ought to be a household name was the one who invented one of the first clothes washing machines. The Pettigo Washer was invented by my great-great grandpa. Who made his mint and retired/sold out before being sunk by Maytag and the rest.
I categorically refuse to mention any branch with Senators and Presidents on it. Unless we throw in infamous relatives.
Tisiphone
Tisiphone
Red Skelton was a second cousin (something like that) to my paternal grandfather. They played together as kids at family reunions.
Does anyone know Texas or suffragist history? I’m the great nephew of Minnie Fisher Cunningham.
Minnie Fish led the women’s suffrage movement in Texas and got Texas women the right to vote in primaries two years before the 19th amendment was passed (this was back during the Solid South, so the primary was effectively the election.) She then went to Washington and helped get the vote for all American women.
In her later years (1944), she got mad that no one was willing to run against the incumbent, hard-line conservative governor and ran an issues campaign out of her own pocket. She wasn’t rich, she was just determined. Coke Stevenson never announced positions on issues, but she forced him to admit his opposition to the New Deal, and she came in second in the primary.
By the genealogical research my family has done, supposedly I’m the Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great(who remembers how many) grandson of Sir Isaac Newton. Woo.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m sure there are tons of Norweigens (sp?) out there that are related in some way to Leif Erikson. He lived such a long time ago, plus he had a sister. I know at least two people who go to my school who claim to be related to the famous Vikings.
–Anake