Really Famous Cousins

If you have a paid account on ancestry.com and you have created a personal family tree, you can check to see if you are related to somebody famous. And I mean really famous. You have to go to your family tree, select an individual. On that page, on the right hand side, near the bottom is the link. I have been having trouble loading ancestry today so I'm relaying this from memory.

I am possibly related to even more famous people than the link shows, however, it isn't a coincidence that all the famous people come from my white ancestor line. This is the line that is most documented. All of the cousins below are related to me through Charles Featherston's grandmother Lucy Elmore and mother Sarah Vaughn.

According to ancestry.com, the Fred Warren family is related to First Ladies
Lucy Ware Webb Hayes, Mamie Eisenhower, and Frances F. Cleveland; presidents Woodrow Wilson and Jimmie Carter, writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Milton, Alexandre Dumas, Elizabeth Browning, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, George Orwell, Clement Moore, T. S Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Penn Warren, Jane Austen, Aldous Huxley, actors Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Audrey(Kathleen Ruston) Hepburn, and royalty, Empress of Russia, Anna and Queen Consort of Scotland Margaret I of Denmark, and one inventor, Eli Whitney, the cotton gin inventor. There were quite a few politicians but they are not as well known.

As you can see there is a preponderance of literary figures in my family. This makes me more excited and proud than being related to royalty and equally as proud as being related to presidents. Is this the reason why I have always wanted to be a writer. Is it in my genes?

Famous People in the Family

I think there is a large percentage of people that start researching their family tree in hopes of finding someone famous or even infamous. I'm no different. However, my rationale is that it is easier to find people who have been documented by other sources.

I am aware of a few relatives that have achieved a little bit of fame. The one that was probably the most well known is related through marriage. My great aunt Maude Alexander married the Reverend Joseph H. Jackson, once president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. This organization claimed 6 million members at one time. Jackson met with political leaders all over the world due to his position. Martin Luther King, Jr. was Jackson's vice president. Due to intense feuding between Jackson and King over the tactics of civil rights demonstrations, the group splintered off into another group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. King joined this new group. I used to say that Jackson was my rich uncle even though he didn't know I existed. When his daughter Kenny got married, my father and mother went to the wedding. My parents talked about how fancy the reception was and how Mahalia Jackson, a famous gospel singer of the time, sang at the wedding.

Then there's my uncle Ernest who is actually in the Doo Wop Hall of Fame as part of the original "Spaniels." This group is known as one of the great R & B singing groups of the 50's. They're best known for the song "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" from the 50's. They are the original singers of that song not the "Sha Na Na." I remember their station wagon with the picture of a Spaniel. The car would be parked in front of my grandparents' home whenever Ernest was in town. I had to google the group to find out that they were on the same tour as the one that ended with the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. My uncle left that life behind in 60's and became a preacher and a pastor. He's not proud of that part of his life so he doesn't talk about it much but he still has that sweet tenor voice.

Those are the two relatives I knew about before I found the link on Ancestry.com. After finding the link, I discovered I'm related to royalty and presidents and writers and actors.