Your Genealogy Claim to Fame?

[marcie dean]

mine is an ancestor george the farmer laird, is the third cousin of william of orange, hes called silly billy in sharp?! perhaps he is also an ancetor of heath whose well known saying is I've been a silly billy and gone and spent it all, wheras william of orange klled of a lot of his own troops in his rush to get away from the battle. and they werre not allowed to call him a coward.!

[mirl]

My great great grand aunt and her husband were immensely popular and successful in the music scene in Melbourne during the 1880's, known as Madame Carlotta Tasca and Alfred Plumpton.

[pinefamily]

Reading these medical posts reminds me of two more.
Family lore had it that we were related to a doctor who was the king's physician. The truth was this. My 2x great grandmother's brother married a Mary Knight. Mary's sister Jane was the mother of Sir Frederick Treves, of the Elephant Man fame, who also did the emergency appendectomy on King Edward VII before his coronation. Not really an ancestor, but it is interesting to see how stories start.

The other family story is that one of our ancestors helped invent a common medicine we use today. The truth? A collateral ancestor was a chemist who worked for what became the Burroughs Wellcome Pharmaceutical Company. And what common medicine? Pseudoephedrine, commonly used in cold and flu tablets.

[Clarkey500]

My first cousin, 5 times removed was William Henry Crump - better known as Harry Champion, the performer who made famous the songs 'Any Old Iron' and 'I'm Henery the Eighth I am' amongst some other lesser known songs like 'A Little Bit of Cucumber'.

I know he's not famous but I would also like to put into the mix my 13x Great Grandfather, William Page, - who was murdered by his wife in 1590. Many people who research Shakespeare's plays believe that William Shakespeare based his play, 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' on his murder! 
If he wasn't the base of the play - the story has been preserved in local folk-law which is still a little claim to fame. I have written up the story of his murder up here: http://www.rootschat.com/links/01hcx/

Edit: Just to add Edward Samuel Shire, one of the inventors of the proximity fuse, is a distant cousin.

[Rishile]

I am still trying to establish the exact connection but Adam Sprackling in the story on this page http://oldramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2006/05/ellington-park.html  (scroll down about 1/3 of the page) is either the brother or cousin of my direct ancestor Robert Sprackling.  It's strange to discover that one of my ancestors is a ghost and still haunts Ramsgate 

Rishile

[clairec666]

I've only found one relative who's worthy of a Wikipedia entry - Archibald Howard Cullen, bishop of Grahamstown, South Africa. He was my great-grandmother's cousin.

I'm probably related to Brian Cant in some way (we share a surname), but I've not managed to prove it yet...

Probably also related to Barbara Windsor in some way - her WDYTYA episode took her back to Bures Hamlet in Essex where a lot of my ancestors are from. Again, haven't been able to prove it, but I like to think of her as "Cousin Babs"

[KGarrad]

Probably also related to Barbara Windsor in some way - her WDYTYA episode took her back to Bures Hamlet in Essex where a lot of my ancestors are from. Again, haven't been able to prove it, but I like to think of her as "Cousin Babs"

My family also emanate from Bures St Mary!
The WDYTYA episode linked Barbara to John Constable - who is also in my tree (as I said at the beginning of this thread).
So, I must be related to her, somehow?

And, of course, my surname is commemorated in Bures St Mary in the "Garrad Room" - the extension to the Village Hall.

[clairec666]

Probably also related to Barbara Windsor in some way - her WDYTYA episode took her back to Bures Hamlet in Essex where a lot of my ancestors are from. Again, haven't been able to prove it, but I like to think of her as "Cousin Babs"

My family also emanate from Bures St Mary!
The WDYTYA episode linked Barbara to John Constable - who is also in my tree (as I said at the beginning of this thread).
So, I must be related to her, somehow?

And, of course, my surname is commemorated in Bures St Mary in the "Garrad Room" - the extension to the Village Hall.

Oooh, you could be a "cousin" too!

My ancestors from that area are Godden, Bell, Woolman, Good, Butcher and Ward. I've not found evidence of any of those surnames marrying a Deeks (Barbara's ancestor), or a Garrad. But there's a good chance our three families are intertwined...

[smudwhisk]

Deeks is a very very common name in Suffolk, we have three separate families, so far unconnected, in the west of the county.  The closest to Bures being in Glemsford but whether there is any connection to any of the Bures Deeks I don't know since we've not followed them that far forward, stuck in the 1700s.  Picked up the Deeks line tracing direct ancestors backwards, just not come far enough forward yet on sidelines as there are so many in the surrounding parishes.