[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

Allegedly I’m related one one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence…and Pocahontas.

I'm related to Edgar Allan Poe. I don't remember how exactly because it's convoluted, but technically he's somewhere in the chain on my mom's side of the family.

paternally I'm related to a bad man, with a hilariously terrible statue, from the us civil war era.

According to my online family tree my 11th Great Grandmother is Joan Shakespeare, William Shakespeare’a sister, making The Bard my 11th Great Granduncle. When I was looking around that was the only notable one I could find who is a direct relative…if you allow 9 times removed and shit basically everyone is related to Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga and Abraham Lincoln.

About a thousand years ago, a Duke came over from Normandy as part of an invasion of my country.

He even built a castle not far from where I grew up. Sadly I'm not allowed to own that castle or live in it.

I forget who it was, but according to ancestry, I'm related to an old US president 3 different times (dad's great grandad, dad's great grandma, moms great, great grandma). And similarly related to one of the singers of the declaration of Independence, I think from NH on both sides of my family. By marriage I am also related to a couple figures that are very famous in my local area, but I'm not gonna name because self doxxing.

But for real, my family tree has no branches, apparently.

I can't get too specific for privacy reasons, but I'm very, very distantly related to a few doges of Venice, by maternal side. (I'm not from Italy.)

Also my grand-grandma has a street named in her honour.

I am descended from Robert Drouin, who is only mildly famous for the ridiculous proportion of people with French Canadian ancestry who can trace their lineage back to him. It is like if Genghis Khan only had one wife, was really into subsistence farming, and still managed to be everybody's Great^X Grandpappy.

Not me, but a former friend who I was doing some geneology stuff for (really fun hobby) had a family legend that there was some Native American ancestor way back somewhere.

Turns out that no, that was not true. But what I found was that there was a bit of the family which was very high up in the early Mormon church, back when that was something to be extremely ashamed of.

Otzi the ice man according to 23&me... It's a murder mystery 🧊🧊🧊

Brigham Young, 2nd president of the Mormon church. Unfortunately since that man was a monster

I’m descended from John Billington, the first Englishman convicted of murder in North America.

Honestly, though, it’s 50/50 that he even did it. He and his family were one of the “normal” ones that the Pilgrims’ glorified travel agent recruited to make up the numbers to make the trip financially feasible, and they never got over the fact that these heathens survived the first winter and then did reasonably well at farming the land.

Of his two sons, IIRC one accidentally shot off a pistol and almost set the Mayflower on fire, and the other got lost not long after arrival and had to be delivered back home by the local Native Americans. I think one of them also set a bunch of gullible Pilgrims off looking for an “inland sea” that turned out to be an overgrown pond.

Aren't there a few million people who are direct descendants of Genghis Khan?

My lineage was apparently having too much trouble with alcohol and heart disease to become famous.

Y Chromosomal Adam