This is a very interesting read even stumbling upon it many years later. I think the original post touched upon a very credible issue that unfortunately still plagues the internet with false ancestries.
I have noticed that people in the US love themselves quite a lot with their bigger than life personalities, but many seem to have separation anxiety issues from Europe and strive to pursue their connection to Englands elite, because it is another thing to brag about.
This separation issue to many either by intent or by being lazy in their research does lead to many false ancestries littering the internet.
I note how one commenter mentions that many were persecuted by religion and were second sons, yet this glosses over the forgotten history that many thousands of these "immigrants" and "founding fathers" were common criminals. Before Australia where did the British send their criminals? It is hard to imagine to people that the original convict colony was the USA. As a result many who cannot trace their lineage were either from poorer common families or were convicts of which documents to help identify them are few and far in between to connect to families in Europe. The chances are if your immigrant ancestor was from a noble family, there should be evidence to prove just that. What the US offered was a new life and a new narrative.
I have battled over the years with the spam of false ancestry many of which is unfortunately published in books all over the US. These books were written about 100 years ago by frauds and con-men and I do need to say that many in the US are willing to take information at face value without stopping to think and question 'is that is correct?'. When an issue is address and a person is educated in line with the evidence (or lack thereof) another will come out with the same disproven theory and start publishing their false ancestry all over the internet starting the education process again.
Today with celebrities we also battle the tabloids who with (and I stress) the bare minimum of research will 'stumble' upon some disproven false ancestry to generate a story and suddenly it is published all around the world. Of course, these people will then start citing because it's in the media so it must be true and the people of the US have a habit of circulating unsupported information.
For instance take the recent Kim Kardashian claim that she is related to Conor McGregor. First to note was that this story came from a Scottish tabloid clearly target towards a US audience as click-bait. The key to this claim was a Thomas MackGehee in the US was the son of Patrick macGregor, Cheiftain of the Children of the Mist. This claim extends from the "genealogist" Charles Henry Browning (now considered a fraud) who first made the claim was based on family letters. Problem was that the letters Browning cited never mention any MackGehee/macGregor connection and in fact were written in the 1750s when the claim centres around a son of Patrick macGregor who would have been born in the early 1600s. Disproven by evidence, logic, Clan Gregor and even YDNA, this story preys upon the US people's gullibility and to this day the Scottish tabloid author will not disclose his research notes to support his published claim. So no, Kim Kardashian is not a proven macGregor, nor is there any proven connection to Conor McGregor whose ancestry is not know to actually connect to the Chieftain's paternal lineage keeping in mind not all of the same Clan surname shared the same paternal lineage as evident of the Clan Gregor YDNA project.
Along the line of claiming descent from virgins, there are those out there who will believe that Kim Kardashian could claim her rightful place as Queen of Scotland a premise that is not only stupid beyond belief, but even if her connection was true, there are many hundreds if not millions of people who would be first in line well before her, essentially a good portion of Europe.
