Samuel F.B. Morse, how I’m related I dont know.
My great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was also Abraham Lincoln’s great, great, great grandfather. (Give or take a great.)
Makes us cousins of some sort.
If my grandmother was to be believed, General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican-American War (and washed-up has-been in the American Civil War) was an ancestor. Scott was her maiden name. I’m not sure whether my brother, the family geneologist, has verified this or not.
Also, at one point, the Scotts and other ancestors owned all of Shelter Island, New York (conveniently located between the North and South Forks of Eastern Long Island). Alas, they owed taxes, and just gave the land up bit by bit to the gummint. A pity.
My family on my father’s side goes back almost to the Mayflower. Whether anyone was important or not, I don’t know, but my family’s gene pool has been on the North American continent a way long time, for white people.
I may be related distantly to Jesse James. My grandpa says he has a cousin who’s a direct descendant to the notorious outlaw himself. Because of that, I got to be the outlaw when my friends and I played cowboys and indians in elementary school.
Incidentally, didn’t he have red hair? Just asking…
Only locally famous. Drunks, poachers, ruffians and general scofflaws. My cup runneth over.
My 9th great grandfather was invited by Lord Baltimore to be the clerk to Somerset Co., MD. Not that famous huh? Well his father was John Beauchamp who was an investor in the Plymouth Colony and was in fact the last person to whom the colony ever owed money too. A little more famous but it’s still not like anybody knows who he is.
My grandmother is moderately known locally in the Hawaiian movement. Ok so maybe a bouple dozen statewide knows who she is.
Ummmmm. My other Grandfather was in "Who’s …, no that doesn’t matter.
Sigh. I used to have famous people in my tree. All the greats. I mean all of them, nobility from Ireland to Byzantium, from Norway to Spain. Kings and Princes, Knights and Saints. But no, I had to be nosey. I had to actually research the claims people were making and prove them all wrong. 
My mother’s side of the family comes from the Lees, as in Robert E. & Lighthorse Harry. Robert E. also married one of Martha Custis’s daughters, which puts George Washington in the mix through adoption. My great-grandfather did a family tree that went back to 1606, and refers to an earlier genealogy that traces the Lees back to Launcelot Lee who fought with William the Conqueror.
On Dad’s side, his mom was a Taylor, with a certain president back in the line.
My great[sup]x[/sup] grandfather Samuel Crowley was the first man to die in the American Revolution. and there were many children named after him. He was a hero whose name is on a monument which faces the Ohio River at a place where it is joined by the Great Kanawha. The men of Cornstalk’s forces Killed him before dawn on October 10, 1774 when he was about 32 years old. The Journal of the House of Burgessess in June 1775 spoke of him and his exploits and it awarded a pension to his widow Elizabeth for the suppport of their children. Five years later, when Virginaia delared itself a state the Assembly of Virginia considered an increase in that pension and the records of that referred to Elaizabth Crowley and her children.
No one of any note, and I’ve spent the past six or seven years looking. I’ve managed to compile a genealogy consisting of about 3,000 people dating back to the mid-1700s in VA, but none of them did anything of national significance.
My great, great, great granfather is listed in the 1790 tax list of Stafford County, VA as having “absolutely nothing of value.” Terrific.
My grandfather on my father’s side was an active communist in central Germany between the wars. He was arrested in '33 and imprisoned for sedition (encouraging an armed insurrection against Hitler). He survived 12 years in prisons and death camps, was liberated from Buchenwald, and participated in the collection of written memories of prisoners that later became “The Buchenwald Report”. He then moved to the Russian sector (knucklehead!) and eventually became East German ambassador to Hungary and Poland.
I had this written out and then the operation timed out. Grrrr.
Abridged version: Joyce Kilmer, great-grandfather, poet. Fred Frieseke, great-grandfather, painter. Fred Kilmer, Joyce’s daddy, chemist for J&J. Francis Drake, pirate and seed-sower, so to speak;)
Elaboration upon request.
Aren’t you related to Val Kilmer also? second cousins or something like that? I respect your reluctance to name drop so you don’t have to answer this you could just give me a wink.
Yeah, it does seem kind of unbelievable. But if you go back far enough in time, the chances of being related to someone get pretty good.
<back of the envelope>If The Bruce had two surviving children, and each of them had two surving children, ad infinitum, and there’s been thirty generations since then…then ignoring for a moment that most of those generations probably intermarried pretty heavily, there could be up to…two to the thirtieth, or 1,073,741,824.</back o.te.>
There’s obviously not a billion Scotsmen in the world, but it should still suggest how easy it could be to be related to relatively old historical figures.
Oh, and my friend Matt Bruce insists that he’s a direct descendant of you-know-who too. I don’t particularly believe him, either 
My father’s father’s father’s father’s father, or maybe his father, was the leader of a Southern Ohio splinter group of the Society of Friend (Quakers). He published a couple books of sermons. I read them once, or tried to read them, they are pretty awful and just drip early Victorian convoluted syntax. His son, or grandson, decided to study in Europe when the Civil War broke out and did not return until the Great Rebellion was safely suppressed. I have his passport.
Otherwise we Geldings are pretty nondescript and ordinary—except for the step-greatgrandfather on my mother’s mother’s side. The Revenuers bodily dragged him out of the Turner Hall in Monroe, Wis., when he physically resisted the confiscation of the club’s stock of spirituous liquors. In the old guy’s view booze was a God given right that government had no business to interfere with. It took six of them to get the old guy down and take away his cane.
Yeah, this is why my assumption of the Scottish throne is likely to be a pretty bloody affair. 
Hmmm. I have one distant relative who is the owner of the BMW corporation and is thus one of the richest women in the world.
Other than that…nah.
Are you saying that Val Kilmer is related to Joyce Kilmer? Wild. Who woulda thunk?
Famous, but only in Finland…and only in certain circles.
My grandfather’s great-uncle was an architect who designed, among others, the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki.
My grandfather used to be President of the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland.
I recall being distantly related, on my father’s side, to Teemu Selänne, the hockey player.
According to my mother, her (throw in some greats) uncle Hiram Cronk was the last known surviving veteran of the War of 1812.
If you live long enough you can become known for something even if you don’t do anything.
When I heard about this I laughed a little and thought of Kojak!!!
This is for all you 70’s Detective show watchers out there.
The actor Harry Guardino from the 70’s detecive shows; I was told, was my mothers 2nd cousin.
It’s true and once I saw an episode on late night T.V. I can see a resemblance.