Do you think you might be related to a famous person? Or are you
simply curious about possible connections? The odds are great that you are related
to a movie star, an athlete, a U.S. president, or some other person of note.
Remember that everyone has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents,
and so on. Altogether, you have about eight thousand ancestors in the past three
hundred years. So does everyone else, including movie stars, presidents, and
others. The generations go back in a mathematical progression, doubling with
every generation. The odds are good that some famous person shares a common
ancestor with you.
Genealogy.com has a "Famous Folk" section on their Web
site that will give you information about the ancestry of famous people. You
can download GEDCOM files from the site and import them into your favorite genealogy
program. Note that you should always import into a new, empty database. Never
import these files into your primary genealogy database! Once you have the data,
you can do searches for names you recognize. In fact, a number of genealogy
programs have automated merges that will search for likely duplicate entries
in your data with data that you obtained from another source. A merge process
will quickly identify possible candidates. My guess is that, if you download
a couple dozen of these Famous Folks GEDCOM Files, you will find some matches
with your database.
Genealogy.com’s "Famous Folks" section has GEDCOM
files for Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Boone, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Marlon
Brando, Walt Disney, Buddy Holly, Betsy Ross, George Washington, Prince Charles,
and my all-time favorite, Lizzie Borden. That is only a partial list; you will
find many more at: www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/
Dick Eastman Online
