Any famous/unusual ancestors?

Hermy

My great-great-grandmothers sisters granddaughter is Maureen Potter.:p

Jellybaby1

Aw, that's a good one Hermy!

gingernut79

My great great grandfathers brother was prime minister of new south Wales for a while in the mid 1800s

genie

My GG Grandmother was a first cousin of Dr Robert James Rowlette :-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rowlette

hamsterboy

The family legend goes that I am somehow related to the late Queen Mother.... damn that blue blood in my veins. Now fetch me my swan burger

HB

notsobusy

artyeva wrote: »

not to mention the spencers! but seriously, that's a fascinating family. i was in chatsworth recently and there's some really cool paintings of her mother. and her mother's 'unsurper'. you ever been there?

Oh yeah that's a good point so not all bad! I've never been to Chatsworth, will definitely put it on my to do list. Have loads of places I want to visit in the UK andn scotland due to ancestors and relatives. Funny though I lived in Berkshire for 2 years and never realised the family connection until I was just moving home. Met up with a 2nd cousin I never knew existed till someone mention him and he lived 10 mins from where I lived!!

It's a mad story though isn't it!!! Men got away with everything!!

To Alcohol

Billy The Kid is a bloodline relative of mine.

RGM

Family legend has it we're related to Red Hugh O'Donnell. I don't know if that's just wishful thinking or not, but I do have strong Donegal roots and O'Donnell ancestors.

odds_on

Not famous but I think interesting - my parents are 20th cousins 3 times removed, 24th cousins and many other combinations of being cousins.

JamesM

mattjack wrote: »

Irish Constabulary Sub-Inspector at Tallaght, Stephen Burke my gt grandfather x5 (I think).

The ‘Battle of Tallaght’

The Irish Constabulary Sub-Inspector at Tallaght, Burke of Rathfarnham, Dublin, known in the area as “Chief Burke”, was watching the armed exodus from Dublin city to Tallaght Hill. In response he took 14 well armed- constables out onto the crossroads between Tallaght and the two roads from the city, via Greenhills and via Terenure (then known as Roundtown) to intercept the various bands making their way south.

The police knelt and returned fire in volleys, leaving six Fenians bloodied on the ground. The remaining Fenians, according to Burke, “ran away in the greatest disorder”.

One was killed outright. Another was Stephen O’Donoghue, the centre, who was “groaning and asking for water”. The police took him to the barracks at Tallaght, where he died. O’Donoghue, who was described as, “a very poor man”, had been married with four children.

“Although I did my duty, I will regret to my last day that the life of one of my countrymen should have been sacrificed.”: Irish Constabulary Sub Inspector Burke, March 8, 1867


Burke told the inquest, that although, “I did my duty, I will regret to my last day that the life of one of my countrymen should have been sacrificed.”[10]

I know that this is an old thread, but it looks like your great great x? grandfather killed mine, Stephen O'Donoghue, Don't worry, I won't hold it against you

L1011

First cousin, many times removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Charles_Boyle

Also related to a member of the Saw Doctors (proven) and allegedly Susan Boyle (not willing to prove!)

Boscod

As my friends here helped me establish, my 2nd cousin once removed Christina Lardi (nee Byrne), became Irelands 34th oldest person. She died in 2000, aged 108 years. Not exactly fame, but noteworthy anyway.

chughes

With the help of a distant family member who I discovered during my own genealogical journey it turns out that I am a third cousin twice removed of Joseph Lyons, prime minister of Australia during the 1930s.

Jellybaby1

I think this is becoming the Brag thread!

Hermy

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

I think this is becoming the Brag thread!

Oh, can I play too?

The maternal side of my Mums tree has thrown up a few interesting people

Farrell Pelly - starred in Darby O'Gill
Brian Lenihan - Fianna Fail TD
Philip Ambrose Lawrence - murdered in 1995 outside the school where he was principal, he is a descendant of the same family for whom the Lawrence Photograph Collection is named

As I've spread the net wider to research some of the in-laws I've encountered some quite famous people

William McArthur Weir - whose family established the well known Grafton Street jewellers
Erskine Childers - Irish nationalist
Daniel O'Connell - The Liberator
Dylan Thomas - Welsh poet
Jane Austen - author of Pride & Prejudice
Trevor Williams - co-founder of HMV
Guglielmo Marconi - radio pioneer
Paul Revere - American patriot

chughes

That would be a difficult one to beat Hermy but when I traced back as far as I could I discovered that, using church records, my many times great grandfather and many times great grandmother may have been Adam and Eve.


Until I have absolute proof though, I won't take it as gospel........

pedroeibar1

Accepting as valid an unproven but very probable generational link in my tree, Winston S. Churchill was the nephew of the wife of my half sixth cousin five times removed!

pinkypinky

Can you plot that on a chart, Pedro?

seanaway

Had a great aunt who was a bit unusual but I don't think that's what you meant .

P. Breathnach

One of my cousins has managed to include (with solid evidence) Gregory Peck on the family tree. I am 15 steps away from the Hollywood legend, two of the steps being marital rather than genetic.

Beat that.

seanaway

P. Breathnach wrote: »

. I am 15 steps away from the Hollywood legend,
Beat that.

Why are you lurking in a graveyard?

pinkypinky

Gregory Peck is related to the rebel Thomas Ashe. Friend of mine's maternal line links to Ashe.

pedroeibar1

pinkypinky wrote: »

Can you plot that on a chart, Pedro?

It’s quite easy to plot Pinky:p
Up the tree back to my 10th great-grandfather (died 1620’s) who is the common ancestor. WSC is linked via the first marriage of our common ancestor and I’m descended from his second marriage, hence the half relationship. WSC is 5th great-grandson down from the common ancestor (so my 10 generations minus his 5 = 5 or five times removed and sixth cousins).
To be honest I let FTM calculate it for me originally!;)

P. Breathnach

seanaway wrote: »

Why are you lurking in a graveyard?

It's the methodology of genealogy.

P. Breathnach

pinkypinky wrote: »

Gregory Peck is related to the rebel Thomas Ashe. Friend of mine's maternal line links to Ashe.

Yep. I'm also connected to Thomas Ashe.

["Connected" is a great word in genealogy.]

Hermy

P. Breathnach wrote: »

One of my cousins has managed to include (with solid evidence) Gregory Peck on the family tree. I am 15 steps away from the Hollywood legend, two of the steps being marital rather than genetic.

Beat that.

I'll see your Gregory Peck and raise you a Jackie O! Well not quite - she almost married a chap called John Grinnel Wetmore Husted before Mr. Kennedy came along. John Grinnel's second marriage was to the first wife of my great great grandfathers older sisters great grandchild.:)

chughes wrote: »

That would be a difficult one to beat Hermy but when I traced back as far as I could I discovered that, using church records, my many times great grandfather and many times great grandmother may have been Adam and Eve.

I can go back a lot further than Adam and Eve.

A great grandchild of one set of g-g-g grandparents of mine married the great grandchild of another set of g-g-g grandparents of mine and their youngest daughter married David Hume Pinsent whose fathers cousins included the grandfather of Olympic rower Matthew Pinsent and his [David Hume's] namesake who was a friend and collaborator of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
This other David Hume Pinsent's niece married Richard Darwin Keynes and his great grandfather on his mothers side is Charles Darwin and he can go all the way back to the dinosaurs!!!:D

Of course I don't mean to claim any of these people or some of those mentioned in the previous post as close relatives or anything like it - we are merely connected as P. B. says.
But it does highlight one of the things I love about genealogy and that is the journey it takes you on as you travel forward and backwards in time.
And the Pinsent tree is a case in point with other connections including the economist John Maynard Keynes, the composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams and the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood.

Youngblood.III

A Hi-King of this fair land.

Jellybaby1

chughes wrote: »

That would be a difficult one to beat Hermy but when I traced back as far as I could I discovered that, using church records, my many times great grandfather and many times great grandmother may have been Adam and Eve.

Oooh! We must be cousins then.

Thomas from Presence

My brother has been challenging me to bring it back to Charlemagne on some side which bizarrely is just about in grasp. I am maternally descended from the Butlers of Ballintemple which gives me aforementioned Charlemagne, Edward Longshanks (the baddy in Braveheart) and lots of other ennobled miscreants.

On the Brunkard side of things it's looking increasingly likely that I share blood with Amanda Brunker within the last 240 years. Feck.

What is amazing to me is how little crossover I've gotten with smart matching on Ancestry, MyHeritage et al. For most of my families it seems my generation are the last gasp, centuries of dying young, not having enough sprogs etc.

L1011

Thomas from Presence wrote: »

On the Brunkard side of things it's looking increasingly likely that I share blood with Amanda Brunker within the last 240 years. Feck.

I'll trade you my SuBo for Amanda, I think she's marginally better!