Famous Relatives

Some months ago, I wrote about discovering that I am distantly related to General George Custer (see “My Cousin Georgie“). In that post, I mentioned that I’d seen a suggestion somewhere that I am also related to Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain), but that I could not sleuth out that relationship.

Well, recently my pal Murray Martin sent me a list of famous people that FamilySearch.org says he’s related to, including Gordie Howe and John Lennon. He said that it’s one of the “activities” that one can perform if one has a family tree on the site. Those Mormons—the site is associated with the Church of the Latter Day Saints—seem to want us to have fun with our genealogies, even more fun than I’ve been having already.

So of course, I had to try it out, and, sure enough, it seems I am related to a whole slew of famous people—including Mark Twain (my 7th cousin 5 times removed, they say). The interesting thing is that it is not through my 5xgreat grandfather Abraham Clemens that I’m purportedly related to Samuel Clemens, but through his wife Mary Custer (the same person who is my link to George Custer). Hence my failure to trace the connection.

I do think this relationship is quite plausible, since I know Twain’s roots were in the Pennsylvania German immigrant community, as are mine, and we’ve seen—in my posts about my ancestral families—how intertwined those Pennsylvania German families can get. I think the same can be said for Dwight D Eisenhower (supposedly my 11th cousin three times removed). I have read that Eisenhower’s parents were practicing Tunkers (River Brethren) before they became Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kansas.

Interestingly, Alexandrina Victoria, better known as Queen Victoria (8th cousin six times removed) and Marie Antoinette (6th cousin eight times removed) are also related to me through the Custer line, but then we know that all those European royals are really Germans no matter what country they ruled over (or ate cake in)—and my maternal grandmother was about the same height and girth as old Vicky. I’m much more delighted, though, with the fabulous Katharine Hepburn (8th cousin three times removed), also related through the Custers; I wish she’d come to some of my family reunions.

Others who are said to be related to me through the Custers are US Presidents Ulysses S Grant (8th cousin five times removed) and Theodore Roosevelt (6th cousin five times removed). Shouldn’t Franklin D Roosevelt be a relative then too?

My relationship to Herbert Hoover (7th cousin three times removed) runs through a wide array of familiar Mennonite names—Martin, Bauman, Baer, Hiestand, Burkhart, and Hoover—with nary a royal in sight, so I am going to buy that one for sure. Heck, I’ve got second cousins named Hoover.

Although President Andrew Johnson (8th cousin four times removed) may sound like a WASP, his paternal grandmother was a Henkle, and it’s Eschmanns and Eglis, and Grundbachers all the way back for him: all good Pennsylvania German names (we ran into a Barbara Egli in my Burkhard lineage). Might well be true.

Jonathan Swift (the 18th century Anglo-Irish satirist, pamphleteer, and poet) is my 6th cousin eight times removed, apparently. I am related to Swift through my one British line, my great-great-grandfather Thomas Randall, so there is a hint of credibility there at least.

I am supposedly related to Henry David Thoreau (11th cousin once removed) and President Calvin Coolidge (10th cousin twice removed) through my Weber ancestors, going back to a 16th-century woman named Elizabeth Dudley, who had two husbands: Edward Henry Weber (my line, Swiss German Mennonite all the way) and Sir John Huddlestone (their line, clearly WASP through and through). Wishful thinking, I think, on the part of some eager amateur genealogist.

Emily Dickinson and Walt Disney are clearly related to each other, since they share the ancestors who supposedly link them to me (10th cousin four times removed for her and 11th cousin three times removed for him), but their lines and those ancestors are so deeply WASP that I’m not buying it.

I’m also a bit skeptical of Gustav Mahler (9th cousin three times removed), who has German names going all the way back to the 16th century, some of them relatively common Mennonite ones, but he was Jewish. It’s possible that a Jew converted to Mennoism, or vice versa, some time in the last four centuries, but I’m doubtful.

I don’t know about Buster Keaton (9th cousin twice removed). His lineage through his maternal grandmother is clearly German right back to our purported common ancestors, but there are some anomalies in my line (like children with different names than their parents) that I’d have to investigate further. The same goes for Helen Keller (10th cousin three times removed): the lineage looks possibly plausible, but back in the 15th and early 16th centuries, things look a little sketchy. So I’ll leave Buster and Helen in reserve.

It’s not a bad bunch of people to be related to, I suppose, even if we discount some of them. But that’s something that makes me doubtful: where are the bad guys, like, say, General George Custer? There have to be more skeletons in my closet than just George. I’m thinking Jack the Ripper or, hell, Heinrich Himmler. OK, Andrew Johnson was the president who rescinded Reconstruction, ushering in Jim Crow and setting Black civil liberties back for generations, so he’s definitely in the Himmler-bad ballpark, bad enough to get himself impeached anyway.

But where are the Europeans? Surely I have to be related to more of them than just the namesake of the Victorian Age, Marie “let them eat cake,” and the wonderful “A Modest Proposal” Swift. Not all of my ancestors were Swiss Germans, not all the Germans became Mennonites, and not all of them came to America. Clearly, this deck is stacked with Americans, perhaps because everybody would like to be related to the darlings of the dominant empire and, of course, the Latter Day Saints is an American organization.

It has to be noted, as well, that these relationships are not based on DNA evidence at all, but simply on the family trees that ordinary people have put together and posted on the site. There is probably a lot of documentary evidence supporting some connections and relationships, but I have found that there is a lot of questionable interpretation going on, as well as a lot of obvious errors (like mothers who are younger than their purported children).

But, yes, if nothing else, this was a fun activity (thank you to the LDS gang), a nice way to wile away a few hours on a COVID afternoon.