Genealogy

Welcome to Will's Genealogy Page!

Genealogy is a part-time hobby of mine. It is also a full-time hobby (almost obsession) with my Aunt Jan. Most of the information presented here was painstakingly collected by her over the last several decades. This page is dedicated to her.

Many people's only concern with genealogy is what famous person or people they are related to. Although this helps getting people interested in genealogy, it is also why most people drop it after a short time. Genealogy can be fun, but for the most part it's just doing lots and lots of boring research.

When you compile a database as large as my Aunt has, you are bound to come up with at least one famous person. I am related to several, although I feel I must point out that these relationships are very distant. Before moving on and discussing them, we must get some general terminology out of the way:

Father: Your male parent.	Mother: Your female parent.
Son: Your male child.	Daughter: Your female child.
Brother: A male child of your father and/or mother; your male sibling.	Sister: A female child of your father and/or mother; your female sibling.
Uncle: A brother of your father or mother, or the male spouse of a sister of your father or mother.	Aunt: A sister of your father or mother, or the female spouse of a brother or sister of your father or mother.
Cousin: A child of an aunt or uncle.	Second Cousin: A child of the cousin of your father or mother.
Grandson: The male child of your son or daughter.	Granddaughter: The female child of your son or daughter.
Grandfather: The father of your father or mother.	Grandmother: The mother of your father or mother.
Grand Uncle/Great Uncle: The brother of your grandfather or grandmother, or the male spouse of the sister of your grandfather or grandmother. The terms are interchangeable.	Grand Aunt/Great Aunt: The sister of your grandfather or grandmother, or the female spouse of the brother of your grandfather or grandmother. The terms are interchangeable.
Great Grandfather: The father of your grandfather or grandmother.	Great Grandmother: The mother of your grandfather or grandmother.
Great Great Uncle: The brother of your great grandfather or great grandmother, or the male spouse of the sister of your great grandfather or great grandmother.	Great Great Aunt: The sister of your great grandfather or great grandmother, or the female spouse of the brother of your great grandfather or great grandmother.

Adding another "great" prefix to a name adds one more generation up e.g. your great great grandfather is your great grandfather's or great grandmother's father. A cousin, without any modifier, is as above. Adding a number in front of cousin adds another generation down e.g. 3^rd cousins are the children of 2^nd cousins (who are themselves children of cousins). If two people have a common ancestor but are not the same number of generations away from that person, they are removed cousins. Each generation difference is one removal e.g. the grandson of your great great grandfather is your 2^nd cousin twice removed. The cousin part is from the person closest to the common ancestor. Otherwise, the preceding example could have also been 4^th cousins twice removed. This is all very neat and covers every possible relationship between two people provided that every ancestor is unique and no one marries any relative. This may sound funny to us today, but it was not that uncommon for 2^nd cousins or even cousins to marry each other in times past. Relations farther apart than cousins intermarried even more often.

I will be creating an indexed web page linking most of my ancestors together in the coming weeks, but for now here is a list of the most common surnames that appear in my database that I am related to, in descending order of appearance:

HAMILTON FULLER FERRISS TYLER DUDLEY HUNTLEY GERLING PRENAVO QUIGLEY SMITH MILLER WHITE ENGELBREIT ALLEN DECORIE GUILLET WOODBRIDGE WALKER CLARK BRADSTREET BAHLENHORST PRENOUVEAU CASHDOLLAR RIVARD CONKY AUGE MACK FELTON LEFEBVRE ROUILLARD BRIGHAM AUSTIN SAUNDERS BLAIR DESRANLEAU WILLIAMS DUSENBERRY HALL WIGGIN BURR BOLEYN GIBBS TAFT PRENOVEAU RARDIN BLOOD BOURGEOIS ROGERS HULL JACKSON

Here is a brief list of some people you may have heard of that I am related to and how I am related to them:

Person	Who they were	is my
Charlemagne	Holy Roman Emperor	39^th great grandfather
Robert II	King of France	31^st great grandfather
Henri I	King of France	31^st great uncle
William the Conqueror, I	King of England	29^th great grandfather
William II	King of England (son of William I)	29^th great uncle
Henry I	King of England (son of William I)	28^th great grandfather
Stephen of Blois	King of England (son of Henry I, grandson of William I)	1^st cousin, 29 times removed
Anne Boleyn	2^nd wife of King Henry VIII, mother of Elizabeth I	5^th cousin, 14 times removed
Elizabeth Tudor, I	Queen of England	6^th cousin, 13 times removed
Elizabeth II	(current) Queen of England	29^th cousin, twice removed
Thomas Dudley, Esquire	Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony	10^th great grandfather
Simon Bradstreet	Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony	9^th great grandfather
Anne Dudley Bradstreet	First female author in America (wife of Simon Bradstreet, daughter of Thomas Dudley)	9^th great grandmother
Joseph Dudley	Governor of Massachusetts (son of Thomas Dudley, half-brother of Anne Dudley)	10^th great uncle
John Langdon Jr.	Governor of New Hampshire, US Senator	4^th cousin, 7 times removed
Jane Means Appleton	Wife of the 14^th President of the United States (Franklin Pierce)	4^th cousin, six times removed
William Howard Taft	27^th President of the United States	7^th cousin, twice removed
Robert Alfonso Taft	US Senator; son of William Howard Taft	8^th cousin, once removed
Herbert Clark Hoover	31^st President of the United States	7^th cousin, once removed
Hugh D. Auchincloss	Step-father of Jacqueline Bouvier, who was wife of the 35^th President of the United States (John F. Kennedy)	7^th cousin, four times removed
Joseph Smith	Mormon church leader	3^rd cousin, six times removed
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams	Playwright	7^th cousin, twice removed; 9^th cousin twice removed
Oliver Wendell Holmes	Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court	6^th cousin, four times removed
Humphrey Bogart	Movie star	8^th cousin, three times removed
Chet Huntley	Reporter	7^th cousin, four times removed

Since all European royalty is inter-related, and since Queen Elizabeth II of England can trace her ancestry directly back to William I, this means that I am also (very) distantly related to her and all her kin. The list of ancestors connecting her directly to William I, to which I am therefore also related, includes Henry I, Henry II, John I, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Edward IV, James V of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots, James I, George I, George II, George III, Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V and George VI.

For those interested, William I was Queen Elizabeth's 27^th great grandfather. Since William was my 29^th great grandfather, this makes her my 29^th cousin, twice removed. Hey, that makes me almost next in line for the crown, doesn't it?

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