Check Pedigrees of the Famous and Infamous

You may be related to someone rich and/or famous--or even an historical character who’s infamous. Most of us are curious about the possibility of being related to some well-known person, or finding an ancestor whose brave deeds are recorded in history.

To learn about such connections requires research of your own families, plus the genealogies of the famous or infamous.

The pedigrees of American presidents, for example, can be examined by checking “Burke’s Presidential Families of the United States,” a book found in the reference section of many libraries.

The more recent “Ancestors of American Presidents” by Gary Boyd Roberts is available in many libraries’ genealogy collections.

To prove (or disprove, as is often the case) family traditions of being related to someone famous or infamous, start by tracing your own family, then go to the local library and read everything you can find on the well-known person. Most of this information will be found in biographies and in histories of counties and states, in old newspaper accounts or in military histories.

Compile the information about the well-known person and put it onto pedigree charts and family group sheets. You need to know when and where he or she was born, lived, married and died. Biographies will include some of this information, but research in such records as censuses, probates, deeds, marriages and military records will be necessary.

If family tradition claims a connection to Jesse James, for example, as many Midwestern families’ histories do, start your research about Jesse James in an encyclopedia, which will tell you he was born near Kearney (then Centerville) in Clay County, Mo., on Sept. 5, 1847, and died in St. Joseph, Mo., on April 3, 1882, and that his family was originally from Kentucky.

From this meager information, you can start your research in the 1850 Clay County, Mo., census by looking for a 3-year-old Jesse and his brother, Frank (born 1843).

That census should give you the names of their parents, their ages and where they were born.

Then by checking in a county history of Clay County, you may learn more about Jesse and Frank’s parents and their exact Kentucky origins. Research in land, probate and marriage records in Missouri and Kentucky will fill in more details.

Additionally, you may be able to find a copy of “Background of a Bandit, the Ancestry of Jesse James,” by Joan Beamis, which was published in 1971 and is available at the Library of Congress and also at Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Ind.; Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka, Kan.; Los Angeles Public Library; St. Louis Public Library, and Sutro Branch of the California State Library in San Francisco.

Once you have traced your own family, compare information about it with what you have on the well-known person. Does anything match? If your line does not merge with the famous one in surnames, localities, dates or social status, you probably are not related--or the connection is so nebulous (via some marriage of an in-law) that it is not worthwhile pursuing.

Or you may learn that you are indeed related to someone famous, and will be able to determine your exact kinship and include the information in your family history.

Your ancestry is unique. Even if family traditions prove to be untrue, you will discover you are descended from many people of whom you can be proud, even if their names do not appear in the history books. The people who really made America were ordinary people, whose stories you should compile and preserve.