Is anyone famous the five times great-grandchild of another famous person?
Just wondering
Supposedly, Pat Boone is a descendant of Daniel. Five generations.
Not direct, but the musician Moby is supposedly related to Herman Melville. Thus his nickname and middle name. According to him, Melville is supposedly his great-great-great-grand-uncle, which looks like five generations to me.
Do you want genealogies (and if so, how reliable should they be?), or genetic evidence? And how broadly are you considering “not royalty”? Because there are certain to be many famous people alive right now who are not only descendants, but direct male-line descendants, of Genghis Khan.
For that matter, statistically, you could take almost any famous person from millennia ago, and almost any famous person alive now, and there’s a very good chance of a link, though good luck mapping it out exactly.
I guess it depends on how you want to define “famous”, but I will offer two examples:
Geo. Hearst- US Sen (Calif)
Wm. R. Hearst–publishing tycoon
Randolph Apperson Hearst–SF examiner management
Anne Randolph Hearst–philanthropist & socialite
Amanda Hearst–model & philanthropist
Samuel P. Bush–business tycoon & was on several federal govt. boards
Prescott S. Bush–US Sen (Conn)
Geo. HW Bush–41st USA president
Geo. W. Bush–43rd USA president
Barbara Bush–pres. Global Health Corp/Jenna Bush–tv presenter & author
Your question may not produce the sort of answers you’re looking for. For example, Charles Martel is extremely important and famous, not royalty, and ancestral to essentially every living European (provably so, with documentation, in many millions of cases). Confucius is even more famous than Charles Martel, and apparently ancestral to every living Chinese.
You might have better success by requiring few generations rather than many. Or perhaps by “direct” descendant, you’re looking for purely patrilineal lines. In the latter case, one that doesn’t work is that Winston `We will never surrender’ Churchill was the 6-gt grandson of the Duke of Marlborough, one of the most important men of his era. Marlborough’s surname was Churchill but, lacking male heirs, his Duchy and surname passed through his daughter.
Lord Byron has an unbroken string of Wikipedia-worthy descendants, up to the present day, although his daughter Ada is the only one who’s really famous, and in any case they’re definitely nobility though not royalty.
Although not as famous as her direct ancestor, my first thought was of the heiress Margaret Mather, direct descendant of Cotton Mather and who wrote a first-hand account of surviving the Hindenburg disaster.
EDIT: (It does not mention her relation to Cotton in that link, but I know her from other sources that do detail it.)
Charles Francis Adams IV (1910-1999) was the great-great-great grandson of John Adams (six generations). He might not be a household name but he was a corporate executive and he was well enough known to have his own Wikipedia entry.
n.m.
Bertrand Russell was the direct decendant of a British Prime Minister, Lord John Russell and also of several Dukes Of Bedford including one of Henry VIII advisors.
David Cameron is a direct decendent of William IV from an illegitimate line and thus from George III.
I believe that Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII minister and Oliver Cromwell were also from the same family.
Kyra Sedgwick is the X-great grand daughter of [Judge Theodore Sedgwick](Theodore Sedgwick) (not sure what “X” is, but probably at least 5), famous for being the defense attorney in one of the earliest freedom lawsuits of a slave in the US.
It should also be noted that about 10% of the US population can trace their ancestry back to the Plymouth Colony. Surely there are many very famous people in that 10%, and we’re talking more like 10 generations rather than 5.
Define famous… the current double-Admiral Cristóbal Colón is five-and-change centuries (and I can’t google how many generations) separated from the ancestor who got the inheritable admiralship. The other one, he’s won by his own merits.
President and CEO of Raytheon Corp.; I had him as one of my contributions here before seeing you’d already ‘gotten’ him.
Sir John Churchill was Captain-General of the Anglo-Dutch-HRE Alliance against the wars of conquest of Louis XIV; he was made Duke of Marlborough in 1702 as a reward for his services. The seventh Duke’s younger son, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a significant political figure in later Victorian times in his own right, before being eclipsed by his son Sir Winston Churcxhill. I believe that’s 9 generations.
Both Bush presidents are descended from John Howland, and thus distant cousins of mine, but I’m not famous.
The Taft politicos go back to early Massachusetts. You think I would remember that, being a member of the Howard family.
As long as we’re looking at the Mayflower…
John Alden and Priscilla Mullins were the ancestors of both John and John QUincy Adams.
JQ was from the 6th generation after John and Priscilla.
I have no idea if he was telling the truth, and haven’t tried to trace his ancestry,but…
Country singer Ray (The Streak/Everything Is Beautiful) Stevens long claimed to be a descendant of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens.
We don’t know his exact identity, but it looks like there’s a wanted murderer who, based on y-chromosome DNA evidence, appears to be a direct male-line descendant of Robert Fuller, an early Massachusetts colonist.
Steve Young, the football player, is a direct male-line descendant of Brigham Young.
There are five generations of Hamilton Fish in the public eye:
Hamilton Fish – Governor of NY
Hamilton Fish II – Republican Congressman
Hamilton Fish III – Republican Congressman
Hamilton Fish IV – Republican Congressman
Hamilton Fish V – Ran for Congress, but lost. Publisher of *The Nation *magazine.