Your Genealogy Claim to Fame?

[lydiaann]

davidft:  Yes, sorry, you are right...I never read my post before I pressed 'Post'!!  My family follow the other northern/Scottish standard:  first born son after the paternal grandfather (Christian name) and first born daughter after the maternal grandmother's Christian name.  Except it all came unstuck when one of the first-born sons never married and had children!

[JDGen]

Gertie Gitana born Gertrude Mary Astbury in 1887 is part of my tree - reputedly as famous as Robbie Williams in her day!!

I managed to find a biography which put some "flesh on the bones" - it was good to see that her wider family benefitted from her fame and fortune although my line was a bit more distant.

Jean

[coombs]

I may be related to the Kray twins again through another line, not just their maternal gran Mary. Their maternal grandad was Jimmy Cannonball Lee, Mary's husband, whose mother was Ellen Sarah Collins, her father Charles William Collins born 1823 came from Surrey, and Charles' dad Charles was born in 1787 to William Collins and Elizabeth Boniface in Guildford. Elizabeth Collins left a will in 1801 mentioning her relative John Boniface of Sussex and her sons Charles, Cicely and Harriet Collins. Charles William had a sister Cicely Collins in 1824. The name Boniface springs to mind as I have a Mary Ann Boniface born 1821 in Sussex. Need to do more digging on this.

[Beeonthebay]

Nobody mess with Coombs right? 

[coombs]

I suppose I should not be too thrilled to be distantly related to 2 vicious East End gangsters who were ruthless lol. 

[andrewalston]

I started this genealogy thing because of a family story told to my mum that she was a descendant of George Marsh, burned at the stake under Queen Mary, and who became St. George the Martyr. Good story, but no evidence to support it other than being in the right parish a couple of hundred years later.
I do have a distant cousin who moved from Lancashire to Co. Durham, and whose sister married miners' leader Peter Lee, who had a town named after him.
Another cousin joined the circus and had an act riding horses. His unusual surname was used to pretend that he had foreign birth, whereas he was born in Sheffield and brought up in Manchester.

[shellyesq]

My husband is a cousin to the Roosevelts of US Presidential fame and descended from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, who came over on the Mayflower. 

Meanwhile, I have found no one on my tree more famous than some local politicians and a basically unknown actor who was convicted of a sexual assault. 

[Beeonthebay]

I just spoke to a elderly neighbour today who told me he was a cousin to the mother of the late American actress Diana Hyland who was the first wife of John Travolta. 

[coombs]

I think it is false that all people with the surname Stewart descend from the Clan Stewart but if all people with a Stewart line or with the surname are distantly related then that would make those of us related to Rod Stewart etc.