My dad, who has been researching our genealogy for a few years now, recently uploaded our family tree data to Ancestry.com, which allows you to merge your data with the data of others and thereby discover new relationships you would otherwise never know existed. So my dad sent me a “Famous people related to you” report which included the following:
Geoffrey Chaucer (depicted above) is my 23rd great grandfather.
John Steinbeck and E.E. Cummings are both 9th cousins four times removed. (Honour Rolfe, 1552-1617, is my 12th and both Steinbeck’s and Cummings’ 8th great grandmother).
Audrey Hepburn is my 13th cousin. (We share a 13th great grandmother, Elizabeth Fitzhugh, 1465-1513.)
Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane, George Orwell, O. Henry, Louisa May Alcott, Norman Rockwell, William Randolph Hearst … all cousins of mine.
show off.
Now when any one of those famous people proudly proclaims that they are related to you, then you know you have made something of yourself.