March 1, 2024
If you’re like me, occasionally you like to take a break from researching your genealogy. If so, Famous Relatives on Family Search is a great place to “play” with your family tree.
Famous Relatives is a way to see which well-known people might be your relatives. Just go to https://www.familysearch.org/ . At the top of the page, there will be a heading listing various areas of the website including Family Tree, Search, etc. Just click on the one called Activities. That will lead to a list of activities, one of which is Famous Relatives. You will need a Family Search account to access this feature, but that is free and easy to obtain on the Family Search website.
Once you’re signed in, just click on Famous Relatives. A list of famous folks to whom you are related will pop up. In my case, I had numerous hits including George Washington, Marie Antoinette, Helen Keller, and more.
Just looking at these famous folks you are supposedly related to is fun, but don’t get too excited about it. Most of these relatives are VERY distant. Cousins such as 12th cousin six times removed are typical of the results I got. Knowing that you’re King Charles of England’s 11th cousin, four times removed probably isn’t going to change your life much.
Then, there’s the accuracy question. The results you receive are based on the Family Search Family Tree. If you’ve looked at the tree, you’ll be aware that there are lots of errors. If there are errors on the tree, then your results on Famous Relatives will be wrong as well.
It can be entertaining to pick a famous person to whom you are supposedly related and check out how accurate the relationship is. If you’ve done a reasonable amount of research on your own family, you will probably have a good idea whether the ancestry the website shows for you is accurate or not. For example, Famous Relatives shows me related to Franklin D. Roosevelt. When I looked at my line back to FDR’s and my common ancestors, I immediately noted that my line was incorrect. The website showed me as descending from a woman who was my male ancestor’s second wife. I’m descended from his first wife. Since that second wife was the connection to FDR, it turns out I’m not related to him.
Even if the line that the website took to link you to a famous person is correct, you still might not be related. There may also be errors in the line from the famous person back to your common ancestors. Another famous person I’m supposedly related to is Alfred Nobel. I know absolutely nothing about his antecedents, other than he was Swedish. Some of my ancestors were also Swedish, but that doesn’t mean we’re related. To know for sure, I’d need to research Alfred’s ancestors. At this point, I’m not particularly interested in researching his family just to prove that we’re 10th cousins, four times removed.
Famous Relatives is still a fun way to spend an hour some day when you feel like taking a break from real genealogy. You never know who your next cousin might be.
Carol Stetser
Larimer County Genealogy Society
Researcher