Finding Your Famous and Infamous Ancestors: Uncover the Celerities, Rogues, and Royals in Your Family Tree

by Rhonda R. McClure

Provides tips for all levels of researchers on finding fame and royalty in a family history, explaining both traditional and advanced Internet research techniques, and discusses collecting and processing this information.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2003

Reviews

[Kbord · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some good charts in this book that explain what x cousin, y-times removed means, and other genealogical concepts. I also am glad to have learned how to do "genealogical math" on one of the other table forms.

There are hints as to what it may mean when some people's professions were unsavory, and the names of professions were sometimes changed in official records.

The book points out that most people's relations to famous celebrities will by through (distant) cousinship.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using this book, I was able to do cousinship charts to show my son's relationship to Steve McQueen, my daughter's to Virginia Woolf, and my sister's to Olivia deHaviland. (Of course, I, my sister, and kids are all related to all of them.)

[Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does tell you how to find your noteworthy ancestors, but it doesn't assume that you're very familiar with genealogy. It walks you through the basics of what you're looking for and where to look for it. I was impressed that it spent so much time addressing the ethics of sharing information and how we need to ensure its correctness. I was a victim of sloppy genealogy: a Website included my mother's marriage date as her death date, and so I never even existed! Worse yet, there was no name connected to the Website, so I wasn't able to correct their misinformation. Finding Your Famous & Infamous Ancestors will give you the help you need to verify those family stories alluding to the possibility of a celebrity connection.