# Your Celebrity Relatives **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 23, 2004, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291 "2004-12-23T05:02:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AllShookDown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d9b06d/32.png) [@AllShookDown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllShookDown)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/1 "2004-12-23T05:02:02Z")
My mom’s cousin’s daughter is (was?) married to John Mellencamp’s guitar player. I’ve been told I’m related to The Amazing Randi or someone like that. I’m also a 9th or some other absurdly distant great-granddaughter of John Alden and Priscilla Mullens. A great-aunt wrote some children’s books. Who are your tenuous celebrity relations? ---
**Author:** ![AllShookDown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d9b06d/32.png) [@AllShookDown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllShookDown)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/2 "2004-12-23T05:04:14Z")
Sorry for replying to my own thread but I just remembered that the husband of “the watermelon lady” from \*Gaily, Gaily \* was my 6th grade teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/3 "2004-12-23T05:23:08Z")
My mother’s second cousin is Randy Travis, but it’s through his father who 1- was the black sheep of his family and 2- has essentially no relationship with Randy (in fact he might be dead, not sure). Rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins was a second of cousin of my grandmother’s. The same grandmother was also a distant relative of Claudia Alta “Ladybird” Taylor Johnson and used to babysit her when she was a teenager and Lady Bird was a little girl. (Though associated with Texas, much of Ladybird’s childhood was spent in the tiny town of Billingsley, Alabama, hometown of her mother Minnie Patillo Taylor.) My grandmother voted for Nixon, however, as she couldn’t stand JFK or LBJ and thought Ladybird was a regal snob. I probably shouldn’t mention this and I have neither hard evidence nor much faith in its factuality, but my grandmother swore that Lady Bird’s grandfather (Claude Patillo) was the biological father of Coretta Scott King (though Mrs. King’s mother was married), which would make Coretta, though younger, Lady Bird’s aunt. This bit of gossip was pretty much accepted as gospel in the hills of central Alabama and, though I seriously doubt there is any truth to it, I’ve never read it in any biography and think it should be preserved as a curiosity. (Of course my father was convinced that Jefferson Davis & Abraham Lincoln were half-brothers, but that’s another story.) My cousin used to live with Jett Williams (biological daughter of Hank) but, since they never wed, I suppose that doesn’t make us related. ---
**Author:** ![Revedge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecae2f/32.png) [@Revedge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revedge)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/4 "2004-12-23T05:35:24Z")
My Great Aunt Marjorie Harkness was a dancer with the original Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. She also was a dancer in the movie “The Jazz Singer.” (The one with Jolson.) 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![LifeOnWry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/96bed5/32.png) [@LifeOnWry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LifeOnWry)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/5 "2004-12-23T05:54:44Z")
My great-grandfather, Louis Panico, was a cornet player and orchestra leader in the 1920s-1930s. He invented a much-imitated playing style called “The Laughing Cornet.” His cousin Frank “Porky” Panico wrote the Doublemint jingle (“double your pleasure, double your fun”) as well as a number of other commercial jingles, and was president of the Chicago Musicians’ Union for years. My biological father’s cousin by marriage was Anton Zander LaVey. On that side of the family, we are also allegedly related to actress Jessica Lange, but I have no idea how. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/6 "2004-12-23T06:04:34Z")
:rolleyes: **I’m descended from Adam & Eve.** ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/7 "2004-12-23T06:06:16Z")
Now that my Mom is retired, she has gotten into family geneology. Through the Jewish Geneology website, she has met various distant cousins and now has a large amount of the family tree filled out. As a result, I found out that my 3rd cousin is Christopher Knight AKA Peter Brady. Haj ---
**Author:** ![Typically\_Sunday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Typically\_Sunday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typically_Sunday)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/8 "2004-12-23T06:07:54Z")
I am a very very very distant cousin of the Beegees. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Serpentine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3be4f8/32.png) [@Silver\_Serpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Serpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/9 "2004-12-23T10:25:28Z")
I’m related to Bram Stoker on my dad’s side. Not descended from (I don’t think), more like cousin a few times removed. I forget exactly how it goes. But we just lost the Stoker name two generations ago. What’s strange is that years ago in this White Wolf chat room I was in a lot, there was another distant relative of Stoker. Weird. Not impressive, but I’ll mention it anyway: My step-uncle was the stunt man for the Grim Reaper in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/10 "2004-12-23T10:37:21Z")
Joyce (fairly known), Aline (to a lesser extent) and Kenton (to a much lesser extent) Kilmer are all direct ancestors. Billy and Val are distant relatives, along with Alec Kessler, who played basketball for the Miami Heat. In the “you wouldn’t know her unless you live in the area” category, one of my aunts (same line as Joyce et al.) is a columnist for a Florida newspaper, or at least she was. Other side of the family features Sir Francis Drake, whom a number of people know of, and Penelope Stout, whom much fewer people have heard of. Others are even greater stretches. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/11 "2004-12-23T11:13:04Z")
Fran Drescher is supposedly a cousin of mine on my mother’s side. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/12 "2004-12-23T12:49:38Z")
Somewhere on my father’s side, in the branch of relatives of his sister’s kids and their married relatives (many of whom I have never met), there is an Elvis impersonator of some repute. I don’t know how much repute that amounts to, if I can’t think of his name, but he’s got that kind of ninth-rate fame that Elvis impersonators deserve, up in Ontario, Canada. _Somebody_ knows who he is - but you know… meh. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/13 "2004-12-23T13:12:33Z")
My grandmother’s aunt was Ann Dodge (of Dodge Chrysler car people). Yipee. **Silver Serpentine** I think tha thappens more than you’s expect. I had two housemates when I was in college who could trace their lineage to Sit John A. Macdonald, our first prime minister. They could NOT however, figure out where their family trees crossed to make them related (they simply didn’t know the history far back enough). So they were were cousins to the Nth degree removed. (In other words, not really related at all by now). It was still kind of neat though. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/14 "2004-12-23T13:15:11Z")
I’m supposedly related to Edgar Allen Poe, on the Poe side (a cousin or something, not a direct descendant). Other then that, I got nuthing… ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/15 "2004-12-23T13:20:30Z")
I’m a direct descendant of Bathsheba Spooner, the last woman to be hanged for murder in Massachusetts. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/16 "2004-12-23T13:46:35Z")
My mother’s great uncle was Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a notorious gangster. Tony Curtis played him in the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Alias](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@Alias](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alias)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/17 "2004-12-23T13:54:32Z")
I am a direct descendent of Robert E. Lee on my mother’s side. That’s pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/18 "2004-12-23T15:35:47Z")
Supposidly I’m a relative (possibly descendent) of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson. But it doesn’t matter when one realizes that most people of Norse ancestry are probably related to some famous Viking. According to my grandmother, we’re also distantly related to Mary Todd Lincoln. We have a lot of weird relatives in that branch of her family, and it stretches pretty far too. Richard Nixon was a part of it, through his mother side. But everyone is related if you dig far enough. ---
**Author:** ![tsarina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f4b2a3/32.png) [@tsarina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tsarina)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/19 "2004-12-23T15:37:08Z")
I’m a second cousin once removed of David Anspaugh, who directed the movies “Rudy” and “Hoosiers”, and according to some genealogist whose research I found online one day, I’m a fifth cousin twice removed of Herbert Hoover. Yippee. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2004, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291/20 "2004-12-23T15:40:14Z")
Somewhere on one of the higher branches of Mr. S’s family tree is Clarence Darrow. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-celebrity-relatives/281291.md?page=2)