Coolest story/member in your family tree

[RickStain]

I grew up being told that this guy was my great-great grandfather:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Wesley_Evans

But turns out I'm descended from a different Hiram Wesley Evans.

 

[Stitch]

I'm a direct descendant of Charlamagne (the Roman emperor, not the idiot rapper), from my mother's side of the family. Not that it's done anything for me.

Beanpole, me and you are kin! I'll be hitting you up for money shortly.

Do any of his direct descendants have any money? I don't.

One of my wife's second cousins is Todd of Big Head Todd and the Monsters.

 

[Greenhorn]

I am distantly related to actress Vinessa Shaw.

 

[JR]

Great thread.

My great great uncle (I think that`s the right number of greats) was in the Northwest Mounted Police, the forerunner of the RCMP. They helped settle Western Canada. I have a copy of his discharge papers.

 

[Armchair_QB]

One of my cousins signed the Declaration of Independence and was friends with Thomas Jefferson.

I'm related to Patrick Henry.

Also have a ancestor who was a Union solider and spent time in a Confederate POW camp. We actually have a transcribed copy of that guy's diary.

 

[hondo]

My great-grandmother and great-grandfather emigrated from Croatia in 1908 to western Pennsylvania. Shortly after, he left her with eight kids. They had purchased a small plot of land near Uniontown, Pa. but he apparently couldn't handle things. Shortly after he bugged out, they discovered a deposit of natural gas under the land. My great G-Ma got a monthly payment for life from the state, plus free cooking and heating gas. She expanded the house and opened it up for other immigrant miners to rent rooms. When they played cards at night in the parlor, she got a cut of every pot. She also had a still in the woods, made her own stuff, found something to color it bourbon, and sold it to the miners for 25 cents a shot. Stories about how tough she was remain legend in our family.

 

[TigerVols]

My late uncle was engineer on a roof in London for Edward R. Murrow's live reports during the blitz, then came home to revive the Grand Ole Opry broadcast and show as the general manager, "wrote" a song that topped the charts for weeks (but really, he didn't write it, he was given it by the real writer in exchange for letting the writer's buddy perform on the Opry), then founded one of the first music publishing companies in the world -- the first song he published was "Heartbreak Hotel" -- became friends with Elvis Presley and one Saturday afternoon brought him over to my house when I was a kid so my mom could make him meatloaf. Oh, and shortly before he died, he married his years-younger nurse, so she inherited the company, and all the money that came with it when Sony/Michael Jackson bought the damn thing years later.

 

[doctorx]

Second cousin on my mother's side survived Dachau and became a writer.

 

[Shoeless Joe]

My great-great-great grandfather was a Confederate 2nd Lt. in the 39th Tenn. Mounted Infantry (Company H if you really want to know). He made it through a handful of early minor battles, was in the shirt at Champion Hill and ultimately captured when Vicksburg fell. He was paroled not long after and told to go home, but the regiment reformed and rejoined the war.

I also had a relative in the Revolution (fought at Kings Mountain) and one in the War of 1812 (don't know much about him).

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Not much here ...

I have an uncle who was a member of Merrill's Marauders.

My great grandfather, a doughboy in WWI, had the man next to him in the trench in France kill himself.

 

[Turtle Wexler]

My family also has two former major league baseball players, including one of the Black Sox.

I think buckweaver would like to have a word ...

Not too much interesting in my family tree, but I'm a fifth-generation journalist, which was kind of cool to discover. Nobody had ever told me.

 

[93Devil]

According to Beano Cook, four years of my cousin is like eight years of Hoover.