On my grandmother’s side, I am allegedly descended from William Dawes, aka, ‘‘HOLY SHIT! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!’’
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
William Dawes, Jr. (April 5, 1745 – February 25, 1799) was one of the three men who alerted colonial minutemen of the approach of British army troops prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord at the outset of the American Revolution.
Dawes was assigned by Doctor Joseph Warren to ride from Boston, Massachusetts, to Lexington on the night of April 18, 1775, when it became clear that a British column was going to march into the countryside. Dawes’s mission was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that they were in danger of arrest. Dawes took the land route out of Boston through the Boston Neck, leaving just before the military sealed off the town.[1]
Also acting under Dr. Warren, Paul Revere arranged for another rider waiting across the Charles River in Charlestown to be told of the army’s route with lanterns hung in Old North Church. To be certain the message would get through, Revere rowed across the river and started riding westwards himself. Later Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s historically inaccurate poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” would focus entirely on Revere, making him a composite of many alarm riders that night.
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Bastogne is in Belgium, not France. It may be a relatively small town, but the military significance of the place is huge! I mean, you’re talking about the Battle of the Bulge, here.
I have an apparently somewhat distant lateral relationship to Nikola Tesla ( supposedly via someone he referred to as a “smelly aunt” ) on my father’s side.
Otherwise nothing of much note - next most prominent would have been a “Croat” ( the term as used here is in reference to geographic origin, not religio-ethnicity, which in this case was Serb ) cavalry officer that served under Napoleon, again from my father’s side.
I’m fairly ignorant of my maternal genealogy past a couple of generations.
My great-great-great grandfather was Robert Blum, a leader of the German revolution of 1848; he was executed by the Austrians for his trouble. Songs were written about him!
One of my wife’s ancestors was Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under Lincoln and then Chief Justice. One thing we learned only recently is that he was responsible for putting “In God We Trust” on US currency.
My paternal great-grandfather was a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. He lost a leg at Vicksburg and wound up teaching math at the University of Mississippi.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was a distant cousin on my paternal grandmother’s side. Besides him, I have no confirmed knowledge of anyone else in my family tree who achieved fame and/or fortune.
Quite a few, and quite recent. Thank you, dear reader, for the opportunity to brag.
My fathers family is a patrician one. I don’t make that up, we are actually in the list of patrician Dutch families.
My great uncle was an Dutch aviation pioneer. The first one to make a solo-flight from the Netherlands to Indonesia. Also the first one to make a non-motorized flight in the Netherlands.
His brother, my grandfather, was one of the pioneers of social architecture. He was also the architect of the first high rise tower in the netherlands.
Their other brother was a war hero. In the war, he was captured by the nazi’s, and taken to a high-rise building, as a high ranking army official, in the hope he would betray strategic intel. Instead, he threw himself out of the window and died.
My father was knighted recently for his lifelong dedication to Third World developement.
On my mothers side, my grandfather was also knighted. He was a Dutch psychiatry pioneer.
