Genealogy, I am doing it

I recently engaged in a 14-day trial of Ancestry.com's offerings of genealogical information. For me, filling out my family tree was pretty simple. I had to only go up two or three generations before the computer found my ancestors and linked them into a large family tree.

I had some pleasant surprises while doing this. There's a feature where one can retrieve a list of famous relatives, and mine list left me feeling quite proud for a person who hasn't really done anything remarkable herself.

I found out I'm a 17th Great Granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer. I also found out this line connects me with another of his descendants, Jane Austen, who is a cousin I'm seven generations removed from. Other literary cousins include: Henry David Thoreau, D.H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, and Aldous Huxley.

Other notables? 11th Great Grandaughter of Miles Standish (Mayflower passenger and signer of the Mayflower Compact). Also distant cousins of five first ladies (Pierce, Roosevelt, Garfield, Hoover, and Eisenhower) and others: Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eli Whitney, Philo T. Farnsworth, J.P. Morgan, and William C. Durrant. (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org)