My grandfather’s great grandfather, was governor of Tucuman in the turbulent years after the argentinian independence. He rebelled against the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas, was defetead in battle, captured and beheaded. His family had to flee to Bolivia, he was only 27. One of his sons - but no a direct ancestor -, became one of Argentina´s best presidents.
Among my ancestors are: an Inca princes, a Danish Ship captain and a British soldier captured during the “English Invations”.
The father of one of my great grandfather was, at the time, Argentina´s richest person. His father was a poor french inmigrant who came to Argentina to make his fortune, and succedeed. He then decided to go back to France, in the way he was assaulted and had to start all over again… and he made another fortune.
Unfortunately, there’s little left of all that money
I have an aunt who is into genealogy in a big way. She says that a relative of ours was Nathan Rothschild’s messenger at the battle of Waterloo. He raced back to London when he could see that Wellington was going to win. Everyone else thought Napoleon would win. Rothschild sold all his stocks on the London stock exchange. Others followed and the market crashed. Then Rothschild secretly bought the stocks back at the last minute at rock bottom prices.
The weird thing is that the day before she told me I watched a video about the history of the world money system which told this exact story.
Colonel Timothy Matlack was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. He’s not well-known, but he was apparently right in the thick of things during the Revolution. According to the National Archives website, he was probably the engrosser of the copy of the Declaration of Independence that was signed by the Continental Congress.
My father’s paternal great uncle developed the original US and Canadian patent on pay toilets, kind of boring but interesting to me at least. He was a successful business man at the turn of the 20th century.
My mother is Canadian, but she has ancestors that fought for the rebels in the revolutionary war. My father’s ancestors (mostly American) were loyalists.
Shoot, if you go back that far, we’re probably all descended from Charlemagne.
I’m descended from one of the original settlers of Hartford, CT and am consequentially related to half the people in CT, western Massachusetts, and Vermont. Slightly more seriously, I’m more directly descended from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_K._Root a guy who did a lot of inventing for Sam Colt.
My grandfather Ralph (on my mother’s side) was a member of the Mayflower Society. According to family legend, our ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, was a tanner-merchant who worked his way to the new world on the Mayflower as a jack-of-all-trades aboard ship. My grandfather was proud of the fact that his ancestor had worked his way to America. Another grandfather. James (on my first step-dad’s side) was proud of his American Indian ancestry. So when my grandpa Ralph boasted about his ancestors arriving at Plymouth Rock, my grandpa James spoke up about his meeting them “at the dock.” yuck, yuck.
Love, Phil
I’m a direct descendent on my father’s side of Dr. Comfort Starr, who had a connection to the beginnings of Harvard University:
My great-great-grandpa, Rev. Edward Comfort Starr, was the oldest living graduate of Yale from Feb. 1940 to his death in Jan. 1941. He has some of his papers archived in the Yale University Library, including letters he wrote from China while doing missionary work there.
My great-grandfather was a McCoy, and directly related to “those” McCoys. My grandmother did some geneology before she passed away, I can’t remember the details but I am related somehow to this man:
On the other side, I have Scottish family that fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie (and hightailed it to the US shortly thereafter). Part of that family, the Renfroes, settled in Alabama, in Renfroe Valley and became so related that my grandmother believes that anyone with that last name is related to us, including the recently deceased Brad Renfro.
My mum’s convinced we’re somehow related to Edmund Arrowsmith, one of the forty martyrs of England and Wales, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in Lancashire in the early 1600’s (his trial took place in a village next to mine). His hand lies in a church a couple of miles from our house.
Yeah, but he’s *good *at it.
Now that’s what I like to see. Everyone’s always talking about the statesmen or heroes they’re descended from, but I’m always wondering about the horse thieves who were hanged and other scoundrels. My uncle traced our name back to 17th-century Switzerland and my grandmother’s maiden name back to the 15th century, but I know details of only a handful of them. I wonder what sort of rascals may have out there whose story got hushed up.
“It is claimed of the O’Keeffe family that there were 22 Kings of Munster in direct male line in the family, and 10 other kings who were brothers, and 4 who were first cousins. During the tenure of the members of the dynasty (one of the longest in world history) the Provence of Munster was not subjected by any foe.”
From the intro of our family history 
Oops! :smack: I came across as sounding like I was likening Edmund Arrowsmith to a horse thief, and that’s not what I meant. It’s just that if he had not come to such an untoward end, he may have disappeared into obscurity. That sort of thing interests me sometimes, along with horse thieves and such.
Out of curiosity, long shot, but does anybody trace ancestry through any of the following surnames?
Bybee/Bibby (other spellings), came to Virginia 1620
DeRamus (also spelled Diramas in some writings) 1734 South Carolina
Rawlinson, about 1690, Virginia
Golson/Gholson- about 1680, Virginia
Caton- 18th century South Carolina
I am medium-closely related to This guy. I’m not “connected,” though.
Joe
My great+some more greats-grand-uncle on my dad’s side was Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the original typewriter.
My mother’s side has a persistent family rumor that we’re descended from the line of Jan Ziska, the founder and greatest general of the Hussite Rebellion. (That branch of the family was transliterated as “Ivoska” and no one knows the original old-country spelling anymore).
A great great grandfather was hanged for horse theft.
My great-aunt told me a story about her father, my great grandfather, who lived in SW Virginia in the ~1920’s or 1930’s. He was a member of the KKK and participated in a tar-and-feathering of a man who was living out of wedlock with a woman. Don’t think race had anything to do with it, I’d never heard of the KKK being involved with general “morals.”
Yeah, they supposedly went after wife-beaters and suspected sneak-thieves as well. I suppose they saw themselves as enforcers of community standards, including but not limited to the racial status quo.