Famous relatives

[wnylib]

10. Hey, Old Crank, looks like you and I might be related.

I've got FDR in the family tree as a cousin, too, but I have not counted out the cousin number.

Looks like you have a closer relationship to QEII than I do. The last monarch on the British throne in my tree was Edward III. But, since he had a large family and descendants in the royal and noble lines often intermaried, all of Edward III's children are in my tree. In the case of his son, John of Gaunt, I've got both John's wife and his mistress in the tree, too.

All of the British monarchs after Edward III have him in their ancestry, including the current royal family, so I guess I have a very, very distant relationship to Charles III and his mother and children, but I've never bothered to count out the generations of removal. The generations are so far back that I'm sure that I don't have even one cell of their DNA today. Too many intervening generations.

Millions of people have royal ancestry from one country or another and just don't know it. But it's fun to look up those distant ancestors and read about them. I learned more about British, American, and German (the other side of my family) history from genealogy than I ever learned in high school or college.