Both my mother and father have German last names but both those families came over to the US before it was the US. I wish I’d known that when I was in grade school and kept getting called a Kraut or a Nazi, I could gave told those little snots that I was probably more American than they were. Although the Italian and Irish grandparents were practically fresh off the boat.
Also, somewhere in the my ancestry are the Killoughs, a branch of that family went off to Texas and became famous for getting massacred by Indians leading to the rounding up of the Cherokee and The Trail of Tears. However, the Cherokee were most likely not responsible, but were set up by some whites, Mexicans and renegade Indians. The site of the massacre is known as the most haunted place in Texas.
Then you could be related to me. I’m not sure if FSK is related to me, but I’m from the Frederick area as is the majority of my father’s side of the family.
It’s been said that I’m distantly related to J Edgar Hoover, but as of right now I haven’t done the work to prove it. It is a possibility though as there are Hoovers on that side of the family.
Not an ancestor but a cousin and IRA rebel, Kevin Barry, was hanged by the british during the Irish War of Independence for his part in an IRA attack. Partly because of his age, 18, he became a martyr and got a famous rebel folk song written about his capture, torture, and execution.
My paternal grandmother’s father was a member of the irish mafia in New York and somehow quit to marry my great grandmother because she didn’t want to marry a gangster. He supposedly, as a gesture to her, took out his gun and chunked it into the Hudson then. He also, among other things, was a worker on the Panama canal.
On my mother’s side, there are a few family legends but that’s about it, and there’s no proof I ever heard of to back them up. Like supposedly Samuel Clemens is a great uncle and that my great grandfather moved to Texas because he was on the run from the law for some big felony (murder is suspected and from the stories I’ve heard of the man, would be in character) and changed his surname. Somewhere between Virginia and Texas he really did change the family name, but I don’t think anybody as any evidence that might suggest why he did. And we’ll never know now.
Barack Obama
Harry Truman
Dick Cheney
George Bush Charles Goodnight (cattleman) Al Stump (Sports writer - Cobb: A Biography which was the basis for the movie Cobb)
Rumored cousin: James Joyce
Yes… that means they are all distant cousins of each other, too.
Other interesting notables:
Soldiers in the Revolution, Civil War, and War of 1812… In particular, one soldier fought at New Orleans under Andrew Jackson.
Some of my ancestors on my maternal grandmother’s side lived interesting lives.
She described her father (my great-grandfather, whom I remember; he died when I was 7 years old) as a “prairie socialist.” He was involved in grain sales to the farmers of Kansas in the first few decades of the 20th century, and socialism in those days was not looked upon with disfavor as it later came to be. I’ve often wished I knew him later in life when I could question him intelligently about his experiences.
His father, for whom I found a long and reverent obituary online, was apparently notable in his day for not holding the usual dismissive view of American Indians as less than human and unworthy of any consideration.
On the other hand, go back two more generations (my great-great-great-great grandfather) and you find a man who was a companion of Daniel Boone. I had been told this bit of family lore at an early age, so it came as a shock when, as an elementary school student, I read an account in a biography of Boone.
I’m paraphrasing, but the passage spoke of a man named Johnson (my grandmother’s maiden name) who burst into the fort where Boone was holed up, shouting and excitedly waving four Indian scalps!
Actress Marlee Matlin is my cousin once removed (or second cousin, I always get them confused) on my Dad’s side. I missed a recent family gathering and thus another chance to meet her in person.
My great second aunt was the first woman admitted to the Bar in Indiana.
My paternal great grandfather was head cellist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
And, my married name is completely unique. When my hubby’s grandfather came to America from Albania, they misspelled the name, adding a vowel in the beginning. My husband’s family are the only ones with that name in America, so far as I can tell.
I will add some more: My great-great-grand uncle was the mayor of Nashua NH in the 1870’s as well as a millionaire. His daughter donated their mansion to be used as a library (and it was) until the town closed it in 2006. Bastards.
My dad’s family has been here since well before the Revolutionary War and I have relatives that fought in it and every war since up to and including Vietnam. I also have on my dad’s side a great x 4 aunt who was married Davy Crockett. My dad’s family was also one of the first homesteaders in Iowa. We still own the original 120 acres. My maternal grandmother married Baseball Hall of Famer Burleigh Grimes’ son after my grandfather died.
My younger brother’s wife is related to John Wilkes Booth. But we don’t talk about that…
I am a descendant of Melchior Bronneman (last name spelled about a million different ways). He was exiled from Switzerland for being a Mennonite: the biggest rift caused by the fact that he believed in adult baptism instead of infant baptism. He was banished and had all his property confiscated: it was given to the state church. They relocated in Germany. Two of their sons relocated to Pennsylvania, and one great granddaughter ended up in Virginia, where she married my great x5 grandfather. Together they relocated to Kentucky.
From what others have said, Amy Brenneman comes from one of these lines as well. I haven’t been able to prove it, though.
I’m something like a fifth cousin four times removed of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia. I also am related to one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
But, the more interesting items in the family tree are the notation that this one was born on the voyage to America, that one was killed by hostile Indians (in eastern Pennsylvania), his family removed to the East, returning after the problem was “settled”, this other one was a ship captain in the Revolutionary war, etc., etc. Makes you realize that they lived in, uh, interesting times back then.
The remotest ancestor I’ve able to track was born about the year 1250. He’s something like my 22nd-great grandfather. He was from the Worcester area, only a few miles and a century away from my SDMB namesake. Maybe there’s a connection?
I have a direct ancestor who came over on the Mayflower and three direct ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, one of whom also participated in the Boston Tea Party.
A more indirect ancestor, some kind of great-great uncle, died with Custer.
And a great-great-great (or something) grandfather in the 1800s who immigrated from Scotland, lived in Canada, then NY, and then a few years after landing in KS, just upped and left his family, who didn’t know where he was until they got word of his death in Canada four years later. Nobody knows why, or if they do, they’re not telling.
