It occured to me today that there are probably people alive today who have had personal conversations with people who themselves had personal experiences with Slavery in the American south. For example, someone who was 10 years old at the time of Abolition may well have conversed, at age 80, with a ten year old who would now be about 80.
So there may well be people alive today who are separated by only one degree of acquaintance with people involved in Antebellum slavery. By that token there are probably many more people separated by just two degrees from such people.
Following that line of reasoning, I realized it wouldn’t be completely surprising if there were people alive today who are only separated by seven degrees from contemporaries of Christopher Columbus.
Probably would be much more surprising if there were people separated from contemporaries of Jesus Christ by only 28 degrees (since you’d need a chain of 28 people who lived to be 80 or so and spoke to a 10 year old who in turn lived to be 80 or so and so on.) But 50 degrees? Much less surprising, it turns out–though it is probably surprising that it might not be so surprising if you catch my drift.
Mundane? Check. Pointless? Check. I must share? Well I shared it.
Along these same lines, John Tyler (1790-1862), the 10th President of the United States, currently has two living grandsons. Tyler had 15 children, 8 with his first wife and 7 with his second wife, including Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853-1935), the father of the two living grandsons. Of course they never knew their grandfather, but it’s still strange to think that they are only two generations from Tyler, who was born in 1790 and knew most of the early American political figures, including Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.
I’m related to Herbert Hoover and to someone who was in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Being that US presidents tend to know a lot of important people, I guess I have connections to a good number of historical people, at least from the last couple of centuries.
The U.S. Government had a program to send checks to the widows of Union veterans of the Civil War. They weren’t able to shut down that program until the death of Gertrude Janeway in 2003, as shown here.
me at age 8 knew and was formally introduced to JW Jones at age 83, when he was around 5 years old knew [obviously] his great grandfather at age 78 who when he was 10 years old was presented to John Adams [vice president to George Washington]who of course was very familiar with George Washington. So effectively I have a Geo Washington number of 4 and a John Adams number of 3.
I am related to this rather unpopulargit, who’s departure back to Britain was probably greeted with great sighs of relief…and I had family on the ship called Little James [I always got a kick out of the name, and wonder if the crew called it the Jamie]