Anyone in your family get their picture in the newspaper or a magazine?
Anyone in your family do a TV commercial or co-star in a movie?
Any of your ancestors make a difference in history? (a discovery, a heroic deed etc)

List 'em here.

I'd like to start out by saying my great-uncle was William Lang Jr. (1914-1968)

He was a journalist for LIFE magazine (1943-1968)
and followed Gen. George Patton's campaign.

He was also very close friends with Bill Maudlin--the Pulitzer Prize cartoonist.

Let's start with me.

I've appeared on "Jeopardy!" and "Win Ben Stein's Money." I've been PC World.

My uncle, Dr. Herbert Polesky, is a fairly well known hematologist. My sister freaked out when he starred in one of the movies shown in her high school health class many years ago (of the 'Your blood and You' ilk).

Sorry, that last should have read "quoted in PC World".

>Anyone in your family get their picture in the newspaper or a magazine? >

Sort of. My Mom use to write for the Hancock Clarion the newspaper for my hometown of Hawesville (pop. 1000). So, I've been in the paper a time or two.

My great-grandaunt several generations removed, Mary Rowlandson was the wife of the first pastor of Lancaster, Mass. She was also the town's leading matron (one of the few priveleged to use the title "Mrs." instead of "Goodwife"). Personality-wise I gather she was a lot like Mrs Olsen on the TV show Little House on the Prairie.

During the first of the "Indian Wars" (King Philip's* War) Lancaster was attacked, and several women and children garrisoned in the Rowlandson home were captured. Because of her status, Mary soon found herself in the charge of King Philip's sister-in-law, who was a sachem (tribal leader) in her own right.

After being ransomed near the end of the war, Mary wrote about her experiences. It is considered to be the first true autobiographical account published in the colonies.

*King Philip was the name the English used to refer to Metacomet, sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, and son of Massasoit, who first welcomed the passangers of the Mayflower to Plymouth.

There was a Pence in Jesse James' gang. My father, who is a prominent geneologist, also believes that are family is related by marriage to NFL football broadcaster John Madden.

>Anyone in your family get their picture in the >newspaper or a magazine?

When I wrote a regular column for the West Virginia University student newspaper, I had my picture in the paper quite regularly. However, it was not a particularly good picture as it was taken with me looking directly into the sun - not only was I squinting, but I was unrecognizable in shade.

I'm occasionally in my local weekly newspaper with my dance class, when we perform anywhere special. I also used to write for that paper as part of a college internship.
One of my maternal ancestors, I have been told, was a carriage maker for the Royal Family. Another ancestor, Amos Pickwick, was the basis for Charles' Dickens "The Pickwick Papers." Sadly, I don't know if that's a compliment or not, as I've never read the book. (My mom said the book was really boring, so I'm hesitant to try it.)

There was a William Berry that partnered with Abe Lincoln in the dry goods business. The business failed because Lincoln didn't get his head up from the books and William Berry never sobered up. Sorry, no relation. I’m not related to Chuck Berry (Roll Over Beethoven), Ken Berry (Captain Palmenter on F Troop), Bill Berry (drummer for REM), Raymond Berry (Hall of fame receiver for the colts and coach of the Patriots in their disastrous Superbowl run in 1985).

Off hand I can think of no famous Berry that you should be mindful of, except me of course.

When I was about three or four years old, a newspaper photographer snapped a picture of me sitting down while our family cleaned the front yard of autumn leaves, and it appeared in the paper as a sort of "slice of life" pic. I was unaware of this until my mother showed me the clipping years later.

As for TV or movies, no family members that I know of, but some friends of mine that I work with have appeared in some stuff. At the end of the second episode of The Sopranos, a group of people are gathered behind a red car, IIRC. Next to Tony's son is a friend of his with dark eyes and hair. His name is Chris Cordero, and he's one of the people I work with at screenings sometimes. His sister and stepsisters appeared in the hallway and in the chorus in the second and/or third episode, and they were extras in the ice skating scene in Serendipity. They do stuff like that. In Nurse Betty, when Greg Kinnear brings Rene Zelwegger to his set for acting work, and a woman in a (IIRC) purple shirt hands him a clipboard. Her name is Margie, and also worked with us.

Well, let's see...sheesh, compared to you-all, I'm pretty boring. But there was that 'High School Happenings' column I wrote during my student internship on my (very, very small) local paper. Single most awful picture I ever took in my life - I looked like the column was an effort to rehab a juvenile delinquent - but by golly it did appear each week.

As for famous relatives...my mom's second cousin is Bob MacAdorey (sp?) one of your local radio and TV institutions. This is exciting primarily because he was able to get my mom and aunt great seats when the Beatles played Maple Leaf Gardens.

On my dad's side, I'm about seventh cousin or so to 'Buffalo Bill' Cody, which I think is sorta nifty.

Oh, and I almost forgot: my one aunt - the same one who got the Beatles tickets - used to model quite a bit. Mostly forgettable brochures and stuff...but there is one lovely shot of her reaching up to some dogwood that made it into a good-sized paper as the 'Herald of Spring' or somesuch.

My famous family member is someone I've never met.
Former professional football player and sportscaster, Tom Brookshier, is my cousin or uncle or something.
I once appeared on a local newscast about the library for about 5 seconds. I managed to make picking up a magazine look stiff and unnatural.

My mom has been on TV on a cooking show in Japan and was mentioned in an article about the cooking teacher in a national newspaper in Japan.

She was in the paper in CT when she taught Japanese Cooking and when she taught Japanese Language. She was also in a newspaper in the US as well as in Japan when a Presidential Merit Scholar named her as her most influential teacher and my mom attended a White House reception where Pres Reagan gave a speech.

My dad was on television when we went skiing in MA during an ice storm, and a TV crew interviewed him, i.e. "let's talk to people crazy enough to ski in this weather."

Well, let's see; it's quite a list.

I, along with my brother and sister, were on the the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker show - way, way back, before they were famous, when they were just starting. My mom says they played that episode every day for a week - because, right after we taped, they got sick and had to do re-runs.

My grandfather was one of the people who helped to invent the modern computer. And I do mean first. He left it in the 50's, I assume because the Army reassigned him. (My grandfather was in military intelligence [no rude jokes] so a lot of his life is a bit unknown to me - that and the fact that I wasn't there for it. heeheehee) He also helped develop the early warning system around DC.
My grandfather also met Eisenhower - twice. Just before WWII, Eisenhower invited Grandaddy to be his aide de camp; Eisenhower met him again about 6 months into the war, when Grandaddy was a grunt, and said, Don't you wish you'd taken me up on my offer?
Actually, I think Grandaddy was involved in a lot more, but I don't remember off-hand. And I think some of it is still classified. No joke.

My grandfather is also related to someone really famous here in Texas - one of the first governors, Governor Hogg. Governor Hogg had two daughters. He said they had beauty and they had wealth, so they needed a strike against them. So he named them Ima and Ura. Seems to have worked: neither ever married. Ura died in her twenties; Ima died last decade, in her nineties. Ima spent the last half of her life living up to her name, trying to erase any trace of her sister. My mom got into an argument when we went thru the Texas Governor's Mansion, trying to convince the guard that Governor Hogg had two daughters.

My mother's parents were also both related to James Fenimore Cooper. Which makes me doubly related to him.

And, quite personally, I consider my dad a historic figure. He fought in Vietnam - something I'm quite proud of. His country sent him, and he went.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of them off-hand.

I'm distantly related to several presidents, including the current one, also to Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan's creator) and possibly (though not proven) Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Brigham Young. Of course, almost anyone with ancestors in Massachusetts before, say, 1800 can pretty much say the same thing. Those Puritans were a rather in-bred lot

Morgan Fairchild is some sort of distant cousin.

One of my great great great great great grandfathers on my paternal grandfather's side was
named George Washington and was a distant cousin to General Washington(my 5xs great grandfather was
older being born about 1682 and was named for his
maternal great uncle Col.George Jordan who was one time Attorney General for the Colony of Virginia).

I don't have a famous ancestor, but I have an infamous (in a humorous way) namesake. When I was in grammar school I did a report on Lincoln. One of his early endeavors was as a partner in a dry goods store with a man named William Berry. The store failed because Lincoln always had his head in a book and William Berry was always drunk.

Gee, I already posted that. Sorry. I need more coffee or sleep.

Anyone related to anyone really INFAMOUS?

Yes. I am.

The woman I fell in love with and THOUGHT I was gonna marry (wrong again, naturally) was Winston Churchill's great-great-grand niece.

Anyone related to anyone really INFAMOUS? Scott McClenny

One of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers, Nicholas Wilder, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. It happened during King Philip's War (see my note about Mary Rowlandson, above).

Nicholas and a friend, Daniel Hoar, killed a couple of Indians. Apparently these Indians were either non-combatants, or had surrendered as prisoners of war, and so should have been off-limits.

Even so, their conviction seems to have been politically motivated. Daniel's father, John Hoar, was a very esteemed judge who was in the middle of negotiations to ransom back several English prisoners of war (including Mary Rowlandson).

After the safe return of the hostages, Nicholas' and Daniel's sentences were reduced. The official explanation was that their youth and excitability were extenuating circumstances. They were each fined £10 by the court and ordered to pay compensation to the Indians' family in the amount of another £10 each.

I'm related to a mob lawyer.

Here's the story of my ancestors who were in Jesse James' gang:

http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/outlaws.htm

My father, who is a prominent geneologist...

Here's the story of my ancestors who were in Jesse James' gang: (Url with "richardpence" included)

I didn't know that you were Richard A. Pence's son! Your father's articles were very helpful when was just learning how to research my family.

A distant relative of mine was Welsh choirmaster Daniel Davies, who once toured America & got the change to perform for the President at the Whitehouse.

Yep, that's me. I guess now I can count him as another famous ancestor!

>Your father's articles were very helpful to me when I was researching my family

I'll pass that along to him.

In honor of Hallowe'en on Sunday and Election Day on Tuesday, Ancestry.com claims to have found a "skeleton" in Dracula's closet: he's related to both major presidential candidates.

In order to substantiate this claim they must interpret "related" a little more loosely than they normally do: 1)Kerry is Bush's 9th cousin twice removed (Kerry's 8th great-grandparents are Bush's 10th great-grands); 2) Princess Diana was also Bush's 9th cousin twice removed (but in a different line; 3)Di was married to Prince Charles; 4) Charles' 16th great-grandfather was Vlad Dracul's brother.

They could have tightened things up (slightly) if instead of Diana and Charles, they related Bush to Prince William.

Note 1: Bush is related to Diana through his father; my confirmed relationship is through his mother (Although a distant cousin once claimed that our mutual ancestor was related to Bush senior, I have not been able to confirm it.)

Note 2: My connection to British royalty is through a different line and to an older dynasty. The same ancestors thrrough which I am related to George Washington connect me to the Tudors

Note 3: I've never looked at Kerry's lineage before today. Some of the names look familiar. I wonder....

Tom: My step-father is an 11th cousin to Bush. As a hardcore Dem and Dean supporter he was, to put it mildly, less than thrilled.

here is an article about how everybody is related to everybody in the end.

---

Quote:

Pedigree collapse explains why it's so easy for professional genealogists to trace your lineage back to royalty--go far enough back and you're related to everybody. For that matter, you're probably related to everybody alive today. Some geneticists believe that everybody on earth is at least 50th cousin to everybody else. For a fuller discussion of the above, see The Mountain of Names, by Alex Shoumatoff (1985).

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Interesting article. I greatly enjoyed it. I do have a couple of minor points, though.

Even though most people of European descent are probably descended (among other lines)from one dynasty or another of their ancestral country's royalty, it is not that easy to prove in most cases where peasant stock is involved, since as you get earlier than the 17th century, peasant lineages, including the by-blows of the aristocrats and royals are not well documented.

Also, "pedigree collapse" would be a lot less severe in high-immigrant countries like the US, Australia, Brazil and Canada than in the mother countries, and the estimates were based on an English population. Although with modern Europeans so much more mobile than their ancestors, they two can marry more strangers and fewer relatively close relatives.

For example, in my Puritan lines, I am sure there were cousins who married in the generations before crossing the ocean, and that among the ones that lived in Massachusetts, connections could be made (but since their families came from different places in England those connections would be further back than if they'd stayed in their home villiages) However, there are only two instances that I can find where the husband and wife shared common Massachusetts Puritan ancestors. The first were sixth cousins. The second were eighth cousins. Their daughter married outside the Puritan bloodlines altogether.

Likewise, my three Irish Catholic peasant lines came from totally different parts of Ireland, and you would likely have to go back quite a way to find their connections. And even further back to connect them with my Puritan line, my London tradesman line, or even my Scots-Irish tradesman line. And my German line should have even less connection than that. (I have no idea about the ancestry of my eighth line -- my great-grandmother was an orphan living in the poorhouse without any other relatives by the age of four!)

One of my ancestors founded the town of Pence, Indiana. (Don't look for it on the map, you probably won't find it)

Brian Webber: My step-father is an 11th cousin to Bush.
Luigi Novi: LOL. I guess God has a sense of humor after all.

I have 6 aunts.

1 of them was a porn actress in the late 1970s.

I won't say whom. Suffice it to say, this is why I generally don't watch porn (unless someone can find a Meredith Vieria tape, then I'll be whipping out the credit card like Billy the Kid. )

Well, you'll be whipping something out, Brian...

Brian,

even if you are related to Bush, you can console yourself with the thought that his own cousins don't approve of him: read more here

I am distantly related to the Bishop Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol.

I'm a distant desendent of some of the old time royalty (which were of course all related to one another): Charlemange, William the Conquerer, etc.

More recently, my dad's cousin is deceased actor Jason Robards.

My Great (two greats I think) Uncle on my father's side is a legendary figure of the small college I ended up going to. After the Civil War the college was in ruins and needed funds badly, so my Uncle rode hundreds of miles on horseback and raised $3500 in late 1860's dollars to save the school, which is 153 years old now with a $27 Million+ endowment. I had no idea of this when I decided to come here, but I knew my family was from the area on one side

Brian Webber: I have 6 aunts. 1 of them was a porn actress in the late 1970s.
Luigi Novi: Um, thanks for sharing.

HOPEFULLY, SHE WAS IN AN EARLY PROGRESSIVE FEMINIST FILM. ANDREA APPROVED OF THOSE.

AREN'T WE ALL 98.5 % GENETICALLY RELATED TO CHIMPANZEES? I WAS REMINDED OF THE GENETIC QUESTION BY A PROGRAM I SAW ON THE SCIENCE CHANNEL. IT SAID THAT A BREEDING EXPERIMENT WITH FOXES CREATED OFFSPRING WITH MANY DOG CHARACTERISTICS (floppy ears and spots) WITHIN 25 YEARS. I WONDER HOW GENETICALLY SIMILAR TODAY'S HUMANS ARE TO PEOPLE OF 35,OOO YEARS AGO.

Anyone in your family get their picture in the newspaper or a magazine?

My picture was on the front page of the Boston Globe 1n 1969 when Dick Williams was fired as their manager. He lived upstairs from us.

Nowadays, of course, I wouldn't care what happens to the Stockinged Ones, who are the Evil Empire Wannabes.

Missed it by a day (Thank Goodness).

On April 10, 1912, in the port of Queenstown, Ireland, Bernard Drury and his sister Katie (who would later marry my grandmother's brother) boarded the HMS Adriatic bound for New York. The Adriatic was one of the Big Four ships owned by White Star. The same day the fourth of the Big Four departed Southhampton on its maiden voyage. It stopped the next day at Queenstown to take on more passengers from among those for whom there was not enough room on the Adriatic. If the Drurys had been a little late getting to the docks, they would have wound up on the maiden voyage of the HMS Titanic.