The Mormons believe exactly that. They baptize dead ancestors, by proxy. As many as they possibly can. Damned if I can remember why - my years spent in a Mormon town are mostly a faint blocked memory.
One of my favorite ancestresses was minor Spanish royalty: Almodis de la Marche. One of the more colorful women of her day, she went through three husbands and seven children. She divorced her first husband, Hugh de Lusignan, in order to elope with Pons, the Count of Toulouse. Then Pons’ friend, Raymond, who’s the Count of Barcelona, convinces his Muslim friends to capture her ship so he can abduct her (not entirely agaisnt her will, it would seem). Then Almodis is murdered by her stepson, Peter, after scheming to obtain Barcelona for her own twin sons by Raymond. Hubby3 is so distraught over her death that he disinherits and exiles his son, so Almodis’ boys got everything in the end anyway. Must have been quite the scene when all three of her husbands showed up for the funeral!
Incidently, her son by her first marriage earned his name Hugh “le diable” de Lusignan in the Crusades, while one of her sons by her second marriage became the great-grandfather of the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine. And the twins? Berenger decided he wanted to rule Barcelona by his lonesome, so disposed of his brother Raymond with one (knife) stroke.
Another ancestor, more recent, was Nicholas Gillentine, born into the old English family of Girlington. His chief problem was that he was, well, illegitimate. His father, John’s first wife Isabella had borne ten children before becoming bedridden. John had found solace in the arms of Magdalen Curwen, Nicholas’ momma. Then, when Isabella finally kicked the bucket, John and Magdalen got formally hitched, having been married in everything but name for years. Nicholas got to attend his parent’s wedding.
Suffice it to say, his being both the youngest and being cursed with the bar sinister meant he couldn’t inherit anything, so he packed up and moved to America when his daddy died. There he married Mary Elenor Echols, daughter of a wealthy Virginia plantation owner. He was known to her family as “that outlandish Englishman”, quite a feat, considering Mary’s own brother was peculiar himself. Her bro suffered migraines, and rigged up a fanciful contraption to wear on his head, and insisted on sleeping upright in an attempt to cure them.
Another ancestor was part of the committee that burnt Joan of Arc; his names escapes me now, but I seem to recall he was a Fitzalan. And not a direct ancestor, but one of my ancestral uncles was the poet Geoffrey Chaucer (his wife, Philippa, was sister of my ancestress Katherine Roet).
My family history on my mother’s side gets a bit hazy after my grandfather, because my great-grandfather (his father) was a doorstep baby. That mythical image of an unwed mother in The Olden Days wrapping up her infant and leaving it at a neighbor’s door? Well, it really happened.
Other than that…shrug everyone else’s just a bunch of dairy farmers - nothing that exciting there.
No.
My father’s side of my family can be traced back to John Adams and such. We still used the last name Adams until the generation before my parents.
On my mother’s side, my ancestors were chamberlains and tutors for the Danish royal family for a couple hundred years.
Yes, that’s right, I come from a long line of managers 
On the other side of my family, I’m related to Maude Van Antwerp, a children’s lit professor who has a hall named after her in Northern Michigan University.
No, no. Restrain yourselves. I know it’s difficult, but I shouldn’t be treated any differently from normal humans such as yourselves. 
Like Opus, I can also claim descent from William I. I can even name my g^n-mother. Mary Norse, a milkmaid. Even then, politicos werea randy bunch.
Another ancestor landed with the Mayflower, a sailor and “a lusty lad”, according to Standish. Before the passengers dsembarked, he-shall we say-celebrated enthusiastically with adult beverages, and fell off. He remained with the pilgrims and the house his son would build for him is the last original structure from that era still standing.
I can also claim kinship to William Penn and John “Appleseed” Chapman.
One of my favorite things is visting the graves of my ancestors and finding tombstones bearing my name dating back to nearly to the 17th century.
Nothing like the high class folks above, but one great-grandfather was a 15-year-old in Dundas, Minnesota when the James brothers and the Younger brothers came through after a bungled robbery in Northfield, Minnesota just 3 miles away. In 1951 at the age of 90 he recounted his story to a newspaper in Washington State, where his family had moved in 1915. It’s a wonderfully vivid account, no doubt embellished over the years.
The actual raid was the inspiration for the 1972 movie “The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid” starring Robert Duvall as Jesse James and Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger.
On my side, nothing at all. All records of the village my grandfather came from in the Ukraine no longer exist. There was this guy named Stalin, you see…
Oh, my mother’s father was an Ennis, from Ennis in County Claire (or something like that). On that side a Shadow fell across the Land and the Potatoes grew no more…
The Wife has some interesting people in her line. She has a great amount of illegal Canadian immigrants in her lineage, many of whose families were here to meet the White Men. She is a great-something niece of Samuel Morse. And she counts Rebecca Rolfe as an ancestress. Most people know Rebecca by the nick-name her father had for her before she emigrated to England. Her father called her Pocohontas.
Pretty cool, even if I think some of the links she has uncovered are less than confirmed.
I’m related to Cecil.
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Ok, I only wish I were.
A distant cousin on my father’s side has worked on the family geneology, but I don’t know how far back he got. I’m American but grew up overseas, mostly in Scotland…My mom still lives on the Isle of Skye where I graduated high school. My dad’s whole side of the family came to the US in the early 1900s via Canada.
Anyhow I am directly related to the infamous gangster Dutch Schulz aka Artie Flegenheimer…my mother’s maiden name.
insofar as how far back it goes… There’s a family tree hanging in our living room that’s about 6’x10’ and all really tiny print…they found it in my late great-aunt’s house, was apparently made in the late 19th century… It’s really hard to read now as it wasn’t kept in the best conditions but the earlieset date I found was 1650something…I couldn’t read the location for my life but it was a Fraser (scottish clan on my mom’s side) and that early I would assume its scotland.
also I had a friend who’s mom’s side of the family could trace their lineage back to some ungodly year in like the 1200’s… and his dad was adopted and didn’t even know who his real parents were… The mom’s side only produced girls, so the line would have ended there… so they decided to hyphenate my friend’s last-name instead… just a little quirky story
and by the way…I dunno where my mom gets ALL her info on family history but I see her on ancestry.com a LOT
I can trace my ancestry back to creation. So I win.
I suspect there’s some flights of fancy somewhere in there, but I don’t know at which stage that may occur, though who knows, maybe it’s actually true.
William Shakespeare’s daughter’s secong husband had the same name as my mothers maiden name - Barnard. There are also genealogical links to whoever Barnard College was named for (I don’t have this info in front of me, its just stuff I know from years past), and Christian Barnard, the guy who did the first heart transplant. The first Barnard came to North America in 1641. We have a bunch of lawyers and judges in the family, my grandfather was a judge on the Quebec superior court. A great grandfather of mine was the editor of a couple of newspapers in Quebec city for several years, and he invented the remote control, but never patented it, so thats why I have to work instead of being rich
I am also related to the Seignieur de Kamouraska, and either a premier of Quebec, or a Canadain PM. I forget which. Basically, my mom entire family, on both sides, were fairly rich, influential lawyers or politicians.
On my dads side, we know as far back as my great grandmother - we have no other info, and have never bothered to look (at least not yet).
On my mom’s side, I have a great-great-aunt, Donaldina Cameron, who was instrumental in ending the Chinese slave trade in San Francisco, in the late 19th century. She also ran an orphanage for the girls she rescued. Cameron House is still standing today, and is (I beleive) some sort of out-reach program for disadvantaged Asian youths. My mom got married with her engagement ring.
Nothing nearly so interesting here. My great-grandfather on my mom’s side apparently came over not because he wanted to bravely seek his fortune in the New Land of Opportunity known as the United States, but rather because he was ducking conscription into the Dutch army. This was during WWI. He was always very reluctant to go back and visit the Netherlands because he was worried they’d nab him.
On Dad’s side, my grandmother’s family completely and utterly disowned her because they didn’t want her to marry my grandfather. He was a poor czech catholic farmer, way beneath their WASP sensibilities. So they cut her off. Then she died when my Dad was four. My dad knew nothing about that side of his family–no stories, no history, nothing at all. He recently began searching and has found scads of distant relatives with whom he’s been corresponding via email. It’s really been great for him.
I traced my family tree on my mother’s side back only as far as my great, great grandparents, Joseph & Tillie Forbstein, who emmigrated to the U.S. from Sweden.
Their second oldest child, Leo F. Forbstein became a musician/orchestra conductor and was responsible for pioneering setting orchestra music to the action on the screen in silent movies. He later went to Hollywood and became the musical director for Warner Brother’s Studios, earning the first ever Oscar for Best Score in a Motion Picture (for 1936’s Anthony Adverse.) He is credited with conducting 459 movies, among them, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Jezebel, Rhapsody in Blue, To Have & Have Not, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Man Who Came To Dinner.
He died while working on the score for the 1948 Academy Awards ceremony (which he had also conducted for quite a few years before his death). He was so well loved in Hollywood during his time, that a number of stars got together and did a radio tribute in his honor.
He had a younger brother, Lou Forbes, who was also a musical director in Hollywood, but never became as famous, as he was always in the shadow of his already famous older brother. However, he was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, though he never won any. And his most famous musical direction credit is for Gone with the Wind.
They had one sister (Bertie) who followed them to Hollywood and set up the first music department for Columbia Studios, but she eventually tired of the Hollywood lifestyle and moved to Houston and opened an advertising agency.
Another sister (Lottye), who stayed behind in St. Louis, had a dress shop that I used to go visit with my mother when I was a little girl. To keep my sister and me occupied, she had us pick up pins and needles off the floor in the back room. Many years later, she was arrested at the age of 82 for bookmaking in that very back room. :eek:
Jeg elsker dig, Thomas
One of my ancestors drowned during the big Chicago fire. We can’t figure out how that happened.
Wow. I just did a google search on my Uncle Leo. You can see a picture of him here, where it also says,
Cool.
And this is very vaguely creepy. I also found pictures of his crypt.