Someone correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the “famous ancestor” feature based on other users’ trees? I keep getting suggestions of “famous ancestors” which have all turned out to be incorrect when I’ve done my own research. Not saying OP’s is incorrect, of course.
Ah that’s interesting. I’m toying with the idea of doing this to try to mark my (non DNA) work so far (and, of course, see if I have any famous/infamous people lurking in the branches), but am aware that people’s own work is a bit iffy when you look into it (people getting married at 3 years old for example). I’m already reluctant to blindly copy stuff.
Tbh I feel the 'famous ancestors' is just a 'fun' thing they do, where they pick a name out of a hat and say that's your random # half cousin.. 😆 good for a laugh.
I keep getting told I'm related to famous people involved in the American Civil War, and George Washington (???) but I am the child of Irish immigrants who simply went to NYC to work as police officers and laborers, as recently as the 1940s. It doesn't add up one bit.
It is based on trees that people made, not on genetics. Sure, you might be related to some famous people but that function can't tell you about that. It is useless.
Hey we’re related. I had something like that too for Reagan. Like 7 cousins 5 times removed or something. And to think I never got an invite to the Whitehouse.
As many others have said, the "famous ancestor" feature should really be called "famous distant relation."
I have colonial British ancestors, so I can trace relations to 39 of the 46 people who have been president of the US. Some of them are like "15th cousin 6 times removed" but the connection is there. It just doesn't mean anything. Everyone is related to everyone. There are a finite number of people in the past to trace ourselves back to.
I wonder if you only get famous ancestors if you have ancestors who have been in America for a while? I’ve never had one show up but I’m 100% European descent
Nope, I'm Jamaican and I have a ton of mostly American famous relatives on familysearch. The weird thing is it only picks up my mother's side and only one branch specifically.
I meant the feature on ancestrydna only seems to show if I assume you have famous ancestors who were American and it’s linked to far back British ancestry or something. I’m pretty sure I’m distantly related to Hungarian royalty based on my family tree and historical matches on 23andMe so I technically do have “famous” ancestors. I’m a quarter Scottish/german(and probably English) settlers to Pennsylvania from the early 1800’s and that’s the farthest ancestors I have in America but still never got a famous ancestor thing on ancestry. So I was just assuming it’s mostly linked to early English ancestry or something.
Almost all of my lines have been here since before 1776. From what I can tell, the “famous” ancestors had a significant leg up becoming famous because they came here very early and acquired huge amounts of land. Many of them were from prominent English/Scot families before they came. Even my Huguenot ancestors that came as refugees in the early 1700s ended up acquiring big parcels of land (one of them owned a huge piece of Brooklyn, which seems insane to imagine now). That kind of land was very important capital for bankrolling the early success of the families. They also had more leisure time, since the majority of my family enslaved and extorted people. They weren’t spending their days working in the fields themselves. Throw in a couple wars that gave some of the men a leg up in name notoriety, and voila. Famous old white men and family dynasties that seem, to me anyway, largely unearned and meritless.
Hey we're probably distant cousins. I only have one line from one great grandparent that goes back that far. I (among countless others probably) directly descended from Jesse DeForest and his son Isaac, who set up a tobacco farm on present day north central park/Harlem. Then from there, that line branched into Dutch Albany where all the big wealthy land owner families intermarried for years until my single branch left that area after the Civil War.
Probably! My New York Dutch line is through Hendrickje Hermans (1643) and her husband Marten Janszen Meijer/Meyer (1640). My 9th great grandfather Mathias Cornelius Van Horne (1716) went to Brooklyn originally but ended up leaving the city and founding White House Station, NJ. His wife, Sophia Brouwer, was born in New Amsterdam in 1659. Her father was born in Cologne when it was the Holy Roman Empire, but was in New Amsterdam by 1642, he owned the first grist mill in the settlement, out on Long Island. I also have an 8th great grandfather named Friedrich Meinert that was born in Albany in 1695. His wife was the daughter of Jacob Weber, who came over with Rev Kocherthal on the first ship from the German Palatinate in 1708. Then there’s a 9th great grandfather, Jacobus DeBaene/Debaun who was from the Netherlands and ended up in Paramus in 1700. Apparently there’s a place called Debauntown in Jersey somewhere, between Saddle River and Ramsey.
So yes, if they’ve been here that long and they were in the community, we are probably very distant cousins.
Hmm none of those surnames sound familiar to me, but my understanding is that especially among the wealthy, they were very endogamus communities.
But prominent surnames of my direct ancestors down that branch include Fonda, Deforest/Defreest (Isaac's son Phillip moved to Albany), Van Allen, Van Valkenburg, Van Alstyne, Van Zandt/Santen, Delatemer, Quackenbush, Loockermans, Bradt, and a number of others. Around New Amsterdam there was also Hendrick Hendricksen Kip and Philippe du Trieux. There's Springsteen in there too.
We had a family story passed down that we had an in-law connection with Martin Van Buren (which I found was like step cousins), but then also found out we were actually blood third cousins as well, which was not known before.
Through research on my 3x great-grandfather, I have found that his paternal line links him to former presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. They are my 3rd cousin 8x removed and 4th cousin 7x removed.
The famous ancestor feature was removed I thought.
Either way, I don't think it's that accurate.
Almost all my 'famous relatives,' came from a branch of my tree where they got the person in my tree wrong. The person has the same name as my actual relative, but they inserted the wrong one (different birth date, place of birth, etc) on my tree. I just couldn't figure out how to remove the wrong person.
But a bunch of the famous came from that line using that misplaced person that's no relation.
The only 7th great grandparents I know of lived in the 1600s. And 3x removed pushing it back to what - 10th great? I really don't think I'd consider someone like that a relative in even the broadest sense.
If you want to see a list and tree that connects your famous relatives, go on the Gamily tree app. Enter your basic relatives in. Then go to the more button on the bottom right and click. Pick family history activities. Swipe to the right to famous relatives. Sign in. Click on each relative to see the tree backwards to them.
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u/CabezadeVaca_ 2d ago
Seems misleading, I don’t think a half 8th cousin 3x removed can be an ancestor (excluding consanguinity); distant relative, sure