Famous Relatives Question
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I know nothing about my ancestory except my parents and my mothers parents. I've always wondered. Last December I found this website. It took a few weeks but I got a family tree that went back to 1050AD. Very cool.
The other day I was looking around the website and found in the menus "Famous Relatives". I clicked on it and I was blown away. Attached is a text file with a list of my Famous Relatives. I find it hard to believe. Going from no ancestry to being kin to almost everybody who was somebody. Could there be some mistake.
Thank you
Jerry
Answers
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Jerry,
Congratulations on your success on finding your family tree! It's is amazing that you have one line traced back to 1050AD. Very cool indeed.
With the technology and ancestor names becoming more available, I too was surprised when I looked at "Famous Relatives" that were in my tree. When I have worked with individuals, families or in a group setting this particular look at family trees sparked a lot of conversations to say the least.
In the recent Roots Tech conference held in March. I joined in on a few events and was impressed that when I joined in on the prompt to find relatives when Roots Tech was live, I had over 84,000 relatives that were available and relatives of others ancestors who were involved in Roots Tech that I was related to at that moment.
All the best in your continued search for more of your ancestors!
Kevin
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I wasn't familiar with the 'Famous Relatives' page so I checked it out. https://www.familysearch.org/discovery/famousrelatives
It's sorted by category but I don't know how it's sorted beyond that. From what I can tell, it's not by closeness to us.
I learned I'm pretty distant from these inspirational people, which doesn't surprise me at all. My family line looks more like this. I do have an uncle who played for the Yankees (1 season, long ago) but he seems to fall below the famous threshold. I suppose I can live with that.
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@Jerry2419 , There is no mistake assuming that all the child to parent connections in Family Tree are correct which they may or may not be. Keep in mind, however, that these are famous relatives not famous ancestors. When you click on most of your famous relatives' view relationship link, you will see that they are generally distant cousins having a common on ancestor with you in the 1400s or so.
In connection with these famous ancestors, you may find this article fascinating: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/
It basically goes over the statistical calculation that if you have European ancestry, you are related to everyone that was alive in Europe in 1000 AD and are a descendant of everyone of them that have descendancy lines reaching today. Since you have that line going back to 1050 AD, I assume to Europe since that is the easiest way to get such a line, then you can show a relationship to everyone that also has a tree going back that far, including all those famous relatives.
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