Your Genealogy Claim to Fame?

[..claire..]

My 6x Gt Aunt Sarah Luce married a Scotsman called William Traill.
His uncle Robert Traill married an American woman called Mary Whipple.

Her brother was General William Whipple who signed the Declaration of Independence .

A small link , but it all adds colour 

[LauraTucker]

My husband's 3xgreat grandfather was Major Robert Renny/ie after whom Mount Rennie was apparently named. His wife was Caroline Franklin Stuart, sister of John McDouall Stuart the explorer, and after whom the town of Stuart in Australia was named (now Alice Springs).

(Incidentally, I also have ancestors who lived in Bures St Mary - Edward Kemp (1798-1867) was my 4xgreat grandfather.)

[brigidmac]

My father lived in same house as John Lennon 1938-39
John was 8 living with his aunt Mimi Smith
My dad was a lodger there when studying for 2 years

I bet he influenced John's music taste   as he liked folky protest songs and played harmonica

But he didn't know that little John became famous .probably never heard his surname

Researchers  for a book found lists of all the students who.d lodged there !
There is now a ledger in Mendips house where they lived with the students names   though my father's surname is spelt wrong

Thought you.d like that as you mentioned John Lennon in your post to begin .

[Beeonthebay]

My father lived in same house as John Lennon 1938-39
John was 8 living with his aunt Mimi Smith
My dad was a lodger there when studying for 2 years

I bet he influenced John's music taste   as he liked folky protest songs and played harmonica

But he didn't know that little John became famous .probably never heard his surname

Researchers  for a book found lists of all the students who.d lodged there !
There is now a ledger in Mendips house where they lived with the students names   though my father's surname is spelt wrong

Thought you.d like that as you mentioned John Lennon in your post to begin .

Now that *is* a good one

[brigidmac]

Thanks I see John Lennon's music in a whole new light now and read biographies about him .

Book researchers traced all the student lodgers but my father had already passed away his second wife did give my mother's contact details as those were the years my parents courted 1948-9

But no one contacted my mum for more anecdote
  She doesn't remember him mentioning  the nephew but Mimi Smith his aunt was quite a character !

My father came from a working class background and was a bit overwhelmed by some of his fellow uni  students .it was great to be able to visit the house he lived in with its 60's deco restored .got a sense of his life as well as Lennon s upbringing

[pinefamily]

My husband's 3xgreat grandfather was Major Robert Renny/ie after whom Mount Rennie was apparently named. His wife was Caroline Franklin Stuart, sister of John McDouall Stuart the explorer, and after whom the town of Stuart in Australia was named (now Alice Springs).

(Incidentally, I also have ancestors who lived in Bures St Mary - Edward Kemp (1798-1867) was my 4xgreat grandfather.)

Wow! That is impressive. I have always liked how Stuart set out with little fanfare, and came back from his explorations. Compare that to the hoo-ha of Burke and Wills. And we know how that ended.   

[Tom Huygens]

I have several

First a vague one. My 3rd great-grandmother was a Copley. The Copley family was rather important in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. They married into lots of noble families and families of estate owners. The eldest known member of the Copley family came to England in 1066 with William the Conqueror.

Then there is my 4th great-grandmother. She was Mary Ann Gibson. Her brother, Stuart Gibson, had two sons (well, he had more, but only two matter here). The first was William Gibson. He was in the navy and fought in the battle of Zhenjiang in 1842. After some years catching pirates in Borneo, he volunteered to participate in the ill-fated North Pole expedition of John Franklin. He never returned...
In a letter to his daughter who remained in england, Stuart Gibson wrote about his youngest son Alfred that he didn't know what to do with him and that Alf was too lazy and weak to find a decent job. Probably to proove himself to his dad, he enlisted in an expedition with Ernest Giles to cross the Western Australian desert. He never returned, and the part of the desert where he was lost is now called "Gibson desert".

Must have been hard for Stuart, having two sons disappear on opposite sides of the world...


Lastly there is the uncle of my 4th great-aunt (who was at the same time brother-in-law to the sister of the aforementioned Mary Ann Gibson), Andrew Pattison Carlisle.
He served as a Lieutenant in the 54th Regiment of Foot during the Battle of Waterloo. If I read the history of that regiment correctly, they were stationed in a town at about 15km from Waterloo. When they arrived at the site, the battle was over.
He later became Captain at the 91st regiment of Foot, the Argyll Highlanders.
His death is quite awfull too. Suffering from rheumatism, he commited suicide in 1834. According to the news paper he had slit his own throat with a razor blade, and when he didn't die fast enough, he severed his artery with a pen. Several people in the medical domain have confirmed that this is highly unlikely. His son was found outside with a bottle of liquor. He claimed to be on his way to his father, but chances are that he was actually just leaving the house after murdering him...

[jaybelnz]

Aw...that's really sad Tom!  I'm sure I've heard of the Gibson Desert!

[Janelle]

The 2nd husband of 1st cousin 8x removed was Joseph Peyton, Captain RN in HMS Defence, and in the Battle of the Nile, August 1798 ... so sailed in battle with Nelson.

Her first husband John Williams, an ordinary wealthy bloke from Exeter, got divorced from her, Elizabeth Melhuish my 1st cousin 8x removed, through the House of Lords ... Williams's Divorce Bill ... February 1783, Mrs Williams accused of adultery with Captain Peyton in Exeter ... and of course she was much vilified in the press in the days and months after.  much airing of dirty linen by the servants was done, in the House of Lords, to achieve the desired outcome.

The marriage record in the parish register (1774 Withycombe Raleigh, Devon) is noted "divorced" on the left in another hand.

And Elizabeth and Joseph married promptly a few months later and lived ?happily? ever after at Wakehurst Place, Sussex, now a National Trust house and Kew's garden in Sussex. 

Salute,

Janelle