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	eilisliana 2007-04-27 07:35 am UTC (link)
	And this is why I don't share my genealogy research with many people, even if you have cool relatives, you sound freaking crazy. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	napalmnacey 2007-04-27 07:45 am UTC (link)
	The coolest thing ever to happen to our family was my great-grandfather in the Merchant Marines got all this cool shit from some Russian nobles while they were fleeing the revolution. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 08:04 am UTC

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napalmnacey, 2007-04-27 01:44 pm UTC

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 08:47 pm UTC

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gunshou, 2007-04-28 05:05 pm UTC

	sepiamagpie 2007-04-27 08:13 am UTC (link)
	my most awesome genealogy thing is being related to someone named Phylander. :( (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 08:18 am UTC

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sheep, 2007-04-27 11:00 am UTC

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gunshou, 2007-04-28 05:11 pm UTC

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eilisliana, 2007-04-28 09:23 pm UTC

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drakyndra, 2007-04-27 09:24 am UTC

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 09:06 pm UTC

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kelmendi, 2007-04-27 11:45 pm UTC

	mojotmonkey 2007-04-27 09:09 am UTC (link)
	... My family used to own a slave ship. ... :D? (Reply to this)(Parent)

littlest_lurker
2007-04-27 09:12 am UTC (link)

The closest I've come to finding out about a famous relative was learning that my great-great grandad used to tell my dad that they were related to Rob Roy, but that was probably a joke and the only relation they had was the last name (MacGregor, on my father's mother's side). But even if that was true I wouldn't really be impressed. One of my ancestors was an over-hyped cattle rustler! Gosh! I think if I were to seriously research it I doubt I'd find anything more interesting than a bunch of dirt-poor* sheep farmers. :|

Though you don't have to go back too far to find coolness in my family, IMO. My maternal grandfather was in the RAF in WWII! It was his job to fly over target areas in a tiny little plane (with no offensive power) to make sure that it was safe to send the bombers and fighters in. I always thought that was cool. And I wish I could have talked to him about it, but he died long before I was born.

*Poorest country in western Europe for quite a while, IIRC. Does that earn me some oppression points?

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 09:11 pm UTC

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black_spot, 2007-04-29 04:58 am UTC

	vzg 2007-04-27 10:04 am UTC (link)
	I'm related (somehow! I ask every once in a while and then promptly forget) to the guy who shot down the Red Baron. Or something. :D ...and don't even tell me having Snoopy as my great uncle isn't the coolest thing ever! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	hallidae 2007-04-27 01:29 pm UTC (link)
	I...really don't know a lot about my family. Too many feuds and long-held secrets. Although, my grandfather insists I'm a descendant of an English duke and duchess on his side, and there was that one great aunt nobody likes to talk about because she went insane during the Depression and pulled an Andrea Yates, then killed herself. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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evilsqueakers, 2007-04-27 11:35 pm UTC

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hallidae, 2007-04-28 01:36 am UTC

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evilsqueakers, 2007-04-30 01:04 am UTC

	isntitironic 2007-04-27 01:47 pm UTC (link)
	A guy randomly came up to me at the mall once and started telling me about how he's descended from Genghis Khan. I refrained from telling him that so is half of Asia. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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exdee, 2007-04-27 02:13 pm UTC

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marciamarcia, 2007-04-27 02:15 pm UTC

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seppuku, 2007-04-27 09:56 pm UTC

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marsdragon, 2007-04-28 05:25 am UTC

	gloria_mundi 2007-04-27 01:48 pm UTC (link)
	Some dude on Mom's side of the family is in the New Zealand history books for having the first of some kind of steam powered farm eqipment. These days, it's in the museum. So yeah, that's all I got. (Reply to this)(Parent)

also_not_a_pipe
2007-04-27 01:49 pm UTC (link)

Oh, but sometimes you get really fun squabbles over it if you discuss it within the family.

My dad's side of the family emigrated to Canada and somehow ended up in North Dakota. The relatives who still live up there are about two hundred feet from Canada, and the story is that they never actually immigrated to the US, they just ended up there after some international border straightening. Supposedly Mt. Douglas in Banff National Park is named after some ancestor on that side. The other dubious story about the daring Canadian plainsfolk in our family is that one of them played a big part in keeping the American bison from going extinct by essentially stealing the US's buffalo. When the buffalo herds were almost gone, he and some guys he knew went down across the border, rounded up all the bison they could find, and somehow got them back into Canada. Then once the US government realized that yes, buffalo ought to be protected, he sent the bison back.

So Dad starts telling his buffalo story at my sister's college graduation dinner for some reason. He's one of those people who is always right. Mom's stepmother is also always right and an evil witch to boot. Well, she knows someone in Missoula, Montana and has been to visit this person a few times. Somehow this means she knows that Dad's story is all wrong and tells him so. Cue big "how dare you malign my family history!" "your family's all a bunch of liars and probably don't even have a mountain!" fight in the middle of this fancy Washington DC restaurant right near Capitol Hill.

It was hilarious. My sister said she thought she saw Bob Dole at another table giving us all the "WTF?" look.

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 09:13 pm UTC

fuzzybluelogic
2007-04-27 01:50 pm UTC (link)

My grandmother used to claim we had some relation to John Dillinger. But that seems kinda iffy, my family on my dad's side is entirely comprised of German Mennonites, Cherokee Indians (ya know, like everyone else in the US), and a pile of Gypsies. But that was like a billion years ago and now everyone's just rednecks. Very tan rednecks. And my mom's French.

Dillinger would have been interesting.

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	queencallipygos 2007-04-27 02:30 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, mine's just too cool -- I'm related on my mother's side to a woman named "Freelove", an end-of-the-world prophet who ended up founding the Seventh Day Adventists, and the world's second-most famous circus midget. I mean, that and a buck-fifty will get me a coffee and a donut, but it's just kinda neat. (Reply to this)(Parent)

onaga
2007-04-27 03:18 pm UTC (link)

I don't have cool relatives. THEREFORE I AM OPPRESSED.

(since everyone is sharing: farmers in Russia, bakers in Poland, dirt farmers in Ireland, farmers in Spain with a detour to cigar-rolling in Cuba. As far as I know. The most interesting thing is that we found out the Poland line was Jewish and not Catholic when some distant cousins were doing their own geneaological research and contacted my great-aunts.)

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suzycat, 2007-04-29 11:08 am UTC

v_digitalwytch
2007-04-27 04:05 pm UTC (link)

Since we're cracking out genealogy stories...

We've got the Prussian Nobility that apparently came over to fight in the Revolution and decided to stick around, then there's the stowaway from Sicily during the 1800s, and scads of 'connecteds' from the Prohibition days ranging from lookouts to bagmen.

Noteds tend to be my great-great grandma who was a cleaning woman for Jane Addam's Hull House who also had Mrs. O'Leary (of the arsonist cow) as a landlady, the other great-great grandma who had some racket going on at the docks and did sidework as an Italian/English translator while she had her hubby stay home doing the cooking and cleaning, my two great-grand aunts who in thier flapper days hung around with Al Capone and on thier farm do have this underground 'facility' where if someone had to lay low for a time, they could-I've seen it, brick pizza ovens in the wall and it's large enough to hide a couple model-t's as well.

We also apparently have an actor who's since turned producer in the family, but until I see this person show up at a family gathering, I'm not putting much stock into the story.

Not helping matters either is when the ancestor who's given us our last name arrived at Ellis Island had pretty bad handwriting and story goes our last name was originally an a, but the swoop was too high and the offical wrote it down as an o which makes for much bickering when attempting anything for research.

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 09:15 pm UTC

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v_digitalwytch, 2007-04-27 11:11 pm UTC

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rachel_pi, 2007-04-29 01:51 am UTC

tehrin
2007-04-27 05:20 pm UTC (link)

My family had a lot of cobblers who came over from Wales in the late 1600's. We have a crest supposedly in the Tower of London, according to my grandfather.

Other side, I have Benedict Arnold (according to my grandmother) and Holocaust survivors and victims (fact), as well as being related to a famous now-retired news anchor. And my Great Grandmother came to California as a baby on a wagon trail.

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mary_mac
2007-04-27 05:47 pm UTC (link)

I think our best bit is the ancestor on my mum's side who was a French soldier at the Battle of the Boyne (tragically, we can't figure out whose side he was fighting on), got wounded, stayed and married a local girl. And then we never went anywhere again until my Granda moved 60 miles north, and scandalised the whole of Navan...

We also have a terminally frustrated genealogist, who has run head-first into there being no records even if your family haven't gone anywhere in 400 years and have a very uncommon name. Especially in the Pale, where folks apparently changed churches as seemed socially expedient, which screws up the search even more than that nice inciendary did.

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 08:59 pm UTC

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fionnabhair, 2007-04-28 04:37 pm UTC

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mary_mac, 2007-04-28 07:16 pm UTC

	julesnoctambule 2007-04-27 06:03 pm UTC (link)
	Stupid comment-eating JF! My recent ancestors have contributed a plant genus, public schools, novels, poetry, mathematical formulas and paintings to the world. I. . .um. . .I'm a really good cook. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 09:01 pm UTC

	plazmah 2007-04-27 06:06 pm UTC (link)
	Hooray, sharing time! Except... I have nothing interesting to share. Unless you're descended from royalty, I think Indian genealogy is pretty boring. (Ancestors: priests and farmers.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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eilisliana, 2007-04-27 09:03 pm UTC

	dark_puck 2007-04-27 06:45 pm UTC (link)
	Like a good half of the South, I'm related to Robert E Lee by way of being descended from one of his (many, many, many) cousins. ....yeah, that's pretty much all I've got. [deleted and reposted in the proper thread] (Reply to this)(Parent)

	seiberwing 2007-04-27 08:41 pm UTC (link)
	My granma was Benny Goodman's half-sister-cousin thingie. I need to go find our old family tree. Bastard never gave us any money, though, but his sister helped my granma's family get over to the US. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	daylightsparks 2007-04-27 09:15 pm UTC (link)
	I am related (by marriage) to the guy who played Boss Hogg on "The Dukes of Hazzard." It doesn't get much cooler than that. I'm also related to the first Jewish general in the U.S. army, and family legend has it that we're related to Paul Newman, but I'm not sure if I believe it or not. And I'm descended from a guy named Shmeryahu Pracherkrug, which is pretty cool too. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	gabsy 2007-04-27 11:00 pm UTC (link)
	I'm supposed to be related to poet Robert Burns, somehow. Which makes my little Canadian-with-an-undying-love-for-Scotland heart very happy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	pastri_archy 2007-04-28 04:19 am UTC (link)
	I think I have too many threads and branches to follow, myself. There's all kinds of stuff in my family's background. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kijikun 2007-04-28 04:59 am UTC (link)
	Kit Carson is in my family tree. (Reply to this)(Parent)

marsdragon
2007-04-28 05:39 am UTC (link)

Everyone's sharing! Too bad the most exciting part of my family tree is some sheep-thieves from Wales. My mom's side is almost straight dirt poor Irish/Canadian Scots-Irish (plus random other British stuff, like said sheep-thieves) and my dad's is straight dirt poor Mid-West farmers. My great-grandmother did kidnap my grandmother from some other relatives back in the '20s, though. That's kinda cool.

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chibikaijuu, 2007-04-28 06:22 am UTC

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oar, 2007-04-28 07:34 am UTC

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katarin, 2007-04-28 05:49 pm UTC

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catslash, 2007-04-28 07:03 pm UTC

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photosinensis, 2007-04-28 11:03 pm UTC

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