It's a Small World: Celebrity Genealogy

My latest hobby is genealogy. I love the search through old photos and records for a lost ancestor, and there is no comparison to the feeling after locating a lost branch of my family tree. I have been doing maternal and paternal genealogy on my family for the past 5 years and I still get excited about the search and I always keep my fingers crossed that I will find some connection to royalty.

Without documented connection, which can be difficult to produce, relation to a notable forebear, experts say, can be almost impossible to prove. The odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on earth is descended from one royal personage or another. Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin University in Ireland, says, "millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs, but the number of unprovable descents must be massive."

By the same token, for every king in a person's family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births and deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We will never know about them because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but noble classes.

Recently, Brooke Shield's was on a show called, "Who Do You Think You Are?' and found she had a royal relation to to Catherine De Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and William the Conquerer. (www.linealarboretum.blogspot.com).

King Edward III who ruled England during the 14Th century and had 9 children who survived to adulthood. Among his descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, and both Roosevelts) authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barett Browning) generals (Robert E Lee) scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and Brooke Shields).

Even Twilight star, Robert Pattinson recently searched for his family and discovered he is a distant relative to Transylvanian born leader, Vlad III, The Impaler.

Tom Hanks discovered that he has lineage to Abraham Lincoln, and Sarah Jessica Parker learned that her great-great-great-grandmother on her maternal side was the last witch hung at the Salem witch trials. (www.frisky.com).

I find that my own family is related to medieval royalty, both documented and non. I can trace my family back to the Plantagenet family which ruled England for 300 years and gave birth to Henry VIII and the House of Tudor. Genealogy is a great and fascinating hobby.