Notable Kin

I imagine every genealogist who's been root digging for any length of time will discover not only a bunch of deceased ancestors but also a few surprise connections.  They can be famous or infamous, past and present.  Sometimes, they are people you know in your own day-to-day life, but had previously not realized were blood relatives.  I've been updating my list this week.  Here are some of the more recognizable names:

Abolitionists: Levi Coffin & Lucretia Mott

Actors & Actresses: Richard Chamberlain, Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere, Rita Hayworth, William H. Macy, Anthony Perkins, Amy Poehler, Kyra Sedgwick, James Spader, Dick Van Dyke, and Joanne Woodward

Athletes: Chris Dudley & Pat Pacillo

Civil War figures: Mary Chesnut, Mary Custis Lee, Gen. George Nelson Macy, and Col. Robert Gould Shaw

Explorers: Admiral Richard Byrd

Historians: Charles Austin Beard

Inventors & designers: Sir Timothy Berners-Lee & Frederick Law Olmstead

Merchants & business people: Henry Clay Folger, James Athearn Folger, Sr., and Rowland Hussey Macy

Revolutionary War figures: Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, and Nathaniel Gorham

Serial killers & one victim: Albert Fish, Abigail Folger, and Herman Webster Mudgett

Singers & musicians: Britney Spears & Erin Willett

U.S. First Ladies: Nancy Reagan, Edith Roosevelt, and Edith Wilson

U.S. governors: Jeb Bush (FL), Thomas Dewey (NY), Jon Huntsman (UT), Robert Lowry (MS), Mitt Romney (MA), and John Anthony Winston (AL)

U.S. Presidents: George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Calvin Coolidge, Gerald Ford, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Roosevelt, and Zachary Taylor

U.S. Representatives: Chris Van Hollen

U.S. Secretaries of State: John Foster Dulles & John Kerry

U.S. Senators: Bill Bradley (NJ), Sam Ervin (NC), Jeff Flake (AZ), Dick Lugar (IN), Stephen Decatur Miller (SC), and Adlai Stevenson, III (IL)

U.S. Supreme Court justices: John Marshall Harlan II & Sandra Day O'Connor

Writers: Katie Coyle, Harry Cust, T.S. Eliot, Erle Stanley Gardner, Herman Melville, George Plimpton, Ezra Pound, Andrea di Robilant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Tennessee Williams