One of my great grandfathers invented the breach loading cannon. Or at least I think it was the breach loading cannon. A better way to kill people in any case. He has a military division named after him.
Slee
He played the tamborine right? 
Let’s see. Who’s in my family? Oddly they’re all on my mothers side and no one in the family talks about them.
My uncle (married to my mothers sister) was in the Hollywood Argyles and wrote the 50’s classic Ally Oop. They broke up and now one dares not mention Darry’s name.
George Miller was my mothers half brother. Of course I just found this out a few days ago. I didn’t even know my mother HAD a half brother. (See semi-rant in the pit for more)
I’m not sure of the exact relation, but Walter Dornberger is on my mothers side and he helped build the V2 missle. He is yet another person my mothers side doesn’t like to talk about.
My wfie is related to Pierre Trudeau of Canada.
My Great-Great-Uncle Frank was the engineer/naval architect who built the US Navy’s first all steel construction tugboat. This was back around the turn of the 20th century, and when the Navy asked him for his plans, he had to admit that he’d never made formal plans - he simply built his boats. So, the Navy chose to commission a tug from him, and then spent the construction period ‘drawing’ plans as my Uncle and his crew built the tug.
My Uncle recently got into genealogy and managed to find a tugboat that my Uncle built that is still operating in Chicopee, MA. The owner of the boat was pleased to be able to write a nice note about how seaworthy and handy his boat is, and how it seems to get the best out of its motor - even compared to far more modern designs.
My family emigrated from Poland in the early 1900s. They were farmers and peasants in the old country, and no one ever bragged about any famous ancestors. I did find out some interesting things about my paternal grandfather after my dad died. He was drafted into the Army but they discharged him when they found out he wasn’t a citizen - he could barely speak English. We’ve got his discharge papers somewhere.
What was most interesting to me was that he worked at Bethlehen Steel in Baltimore for years, although no one seemed to know what he did there. One of my cousins unearthed a photo of him at work, and my husband knew immediately that my grandfather worked on a wire drawing line, probably in the galvanizing section. The reason this interests me is because my husband’s first engineering job was desiging a galvanizing line for a wire drawing plant! It seems somehow right that my husband now wears my grandfather’s wedding band (with Feb 27, 1913 engraved inside.)
My paternal grandmother was distantly related to Dr David Livingstone.
One of my maternal great uncles was Goebbel’s pyschotherapist…which is why he was sent to work in a hospital which treated German soldiers returning from the eastern front, instead of Dachau (he was Jewish). He was killed when the Russians advanced on Berlin.
I can’t confidently claim this gentleman as a direct ancestor, though he is part of the family, so I present this story just because it’s too cool not to share.
1715 – the first Jacobite rebellion: while the majority of rural Northumberland was with the rebellion, the major coastal towns, and the ports associated with them, were held by supporters of King George. This left the rebels with the problem of how to gets supplies and maintain contact with their allies in France. My forebear, Lancelot by name (and I like him just because of that), came up with a plan. The island of Lindisfarne lies close to Northumbrian coast, and is accessible from the mainland by a causeway at low tide. It also had, at the time, a small naval dock suitable for moderate sized ships. What it also had, though, was a castle with a small garrison of redcoats.
Lancelot, with his nephew Mark, borrowed a small boat and sailed out to Lindisfarne, where they tied up next to the castle and made friends with the garrison commander. They invited him and his men onto the boat that evening for drinks – got them all roaring drunk, set them adrift, and seized the castle.
At daybreak they raised the Jacobite flag on the castle, which was the signal for their compatriots to cross the causeway and occupy the castle. Unfortunately, a patrol of King’s men from up the coast at Berwick happened by just then, and seeing the flag came to investigate. Lancelot and Mark, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, climbed down the sea wall of the castle and hid among the seaweed on the rocks below. Unfortunately, the tide changed and they were forced to swim for it. They made the coast, but were spotted climbing a cliff and fired on. Lancelot caught a musket ball in his leg, and they were both captured.
Imprisoned in the cellar of Berwick castle (with a number of others) Lancelot waited only long enough for his leg to heal before digging an escape tunnel, hiding the earth in an old oven (the cellar had originally been the castle kitchens). All the prisoners escaped, but were quickly recaptured apart from Lancelot and Mark, who stole a water bailiff’s boat, rowed across the river Tweed, and made their way south to Newcastle, where they were hidden by friends in Gosforth House until plans could be made to spirit them away to France.
They laid low in France until the end of the rebellion the following year and the announcement of an amnesty (though apparently Lancelot would frequently travel back to Newcastle to see friends, despite the price on his head).
On his return, Lancelot opened a pub in Newcastle, which he ran successfully until the end of his life – it’s said that he died of a broken heart when he heard of the failure of the second Jacobite rebellion in 1745.
I have an ancestress, Jane (Hall) Kasson, who accompanied her husband, Adam Kasson, to Conneticutt in 1722. Their youngest child died at the age of 13, in 1735, which means she either had seven kids, and was heavily pregnant on the voyage over, or she had a brand new baby, with seven other ankle biters to supervise. That she managed to do this and not bop hubby over the head for uprooting the family is, to me, very cool.
A son of hers was court-martialed during the Revolutionary War. He refused to fight with the French auxiliaries that were brought over by Lafayette, they being Catholic and he a rabid Protestant. He got pardoned though, probably because they needed every able bodied man they could get.
Another Kasson descendant, John Adam Kasson, was Postmaster General of the USA in the latter 1800’s. He also served as ambassador to Austria-Hungary, and was the author/editor of the official book on the centennial of the US Constitution. I’m not descended from him, our only common ancestor is Adam Kasson(see first paragraph). I figured out the relationship once, though. He is my third cousin five times removed.
On my mother’s side I’m a direct descendant of Bathsheba Spooner, rumoured to be the last woman hanged in Massachusetts.
I’m also the great-grand niece of President William Howard Taft through the Howard side (my mother and brother both have the middle name of “Howard”).
Oh yes. Jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden was some shirttail relative of my mother. My father’s family seems to have consisted mostly of obscure horsethieves, second-story men and fallen women.
There are no descendents of Benedict Arnold. I’m also related to him by distant marriage.
My tree contains two Mayflower travelers and several Declaration signers, an Ohio River boat captain, a Revolutionary War veteran, a Civil War POW, and most of the old crown heads of Europe.
Oops, my mistake. I was thinking of someone else.
What, may I ask, is a shirttail relative?
A distant relative by marriage, i.e., a 12th cousin or somesuch.
Thanks
I supposedly have a distant relative on my father’s side who was Marlon Brando’s uncle.
Better yet, my ggf was a Missouri Synod Lutheran minister who used to preach for an hour in German an and hour in English every Sunday and played a violin solo in between. This much, my dad confirms.
My other ggfs (I know about) were a wholesale fruit and vegetable vendor from Bridgeport, CT who supposedly invented the ice cream sandwich. His favorite city on Earth was Vienna. On his last trip there in 1954, he got lost in the Russian sector and was interned overnight. He never wanted to talk about that. He died a year later.
His son, my gf, was supposedly the first Italian-American elected to public office in the state of Connecticut (Bridgeport alderman, 1933).
Other ancestors (details sketchy) supposedly included a psychic, a woman who lived to age 103, and a Prussian soldier who fought Napoleon at Waterloo.
…and a wholesale grocer from Des Moines, IA. They never knew each other but would probably have had a good time talking shop. They were both born in 1872.
Ggf Des Moines’ brother-in-law, my gguncle, ran one of the biggest temporary help agencies in Chicago. He was a rich bachelor who liked to shoot grouse and play nasty practical jokes on the nieces and nephews.
The women were rather a retiring lot, I gather…
On my father’s side, Francis Scott Key (author of patriotic literature).
On my mother’s side, Czar Nicolas I (on entirely the wrong side of the blanket howsoever). Also my grandmother, not famous, but should have been. She (according to family history and the really really gruesome stories she used to tell us on the sly when our parents weren’t looking) lived near the Dachau concentration camp throughout WWII. She remained a vocal and fairly active opponent of the Nazi party throughout the war - surviving being relocated to the camps only because her husband had developed (just barely prior to the beginning of the relocations) a variant of plexiglass that was absolutely necessary to the war effort. He was a stubborn bastard and a devout Socialist and refused to tell anyone else how to make it (because he was a bright man and could see which way the wind was blowing). After they started relocating people, he made it crystal clear that his continued assistance was contingent on his family’s well-being. He told his superiors that he tragically suffered from a form of amnesia - when he was worried about his family, he couldn’t remember a thing.
My grandmother, not being one to take things quietly, spent the bulk of the war engaged in the smuggling of personal family keepsakes out of Dachau. She hid them under the floorboards of her home. After the war was over, she spent quite a lot of time finding the families and heirs of the owners and returning items. Wedding rings, menorahs, pocket watches, other jewelry. After a number of years, once there was an official organization she trusted in place to deal with it, she gave the lot to that organization. It amounted to tens of thousands of family momentos - at the time with a market value of over a million US dollars. She refused to take a penny.
She then immigrated to the US (ilegally) and lived here until her death. As her husband died shortly afer she immigrated, she raised 5 children alone in a coungry where she barely spoke the language. She sent all 5 to college.
When she died, 682 Jewish people came to her funeral - the people whose family keepsakes she’d saved. It was an impressive sight. Many of them came from Israel and Germany to be there. Many of them spoke no English. I remember being hugged by an elderly lady with a tattoo on her arm who spoke not a word of English but was nearly as upset about my grandmother’s passing as I was.
I’m distantly related to Frank Perdue (of Perdue chicken fame) and have discovered records that my earliest American ancestor tagged his livestock by cropping the top of the right ear and leaving the left ear intact. “What’s weird about that, Jurph?” you may well ask. What’s weird is that I was born with a perfect left ear… and a notch in the top of my right ear.
Neat, huh?
You win. That is one cool gran.
My paternal grandfather was a Marine on the Quincy when it was sunk during WWII’s battle to retake Guadalcanal Island. Several other ships were sunk that day as well, and it was the worst one-day naval loss of life in American history. Grandpa survived but never would speak of his hours in the shark-infested water waiting for rescue, even when the Nat’l Geographic Society wanted to interview him after they located the Quincy. The Australian ships Astoria and Canberra and American ship Vincennes were sunk later that night. The survivors from all 3 ships were transported together and sworn to secrecy about what happened until the end of the war.