Famous American Ancestors

Both my ancestors and my wife’s ancestors have been in America since the 1630s. Since that pre-dates the founding of the US by over a century, there has been a lot of time for successive generations to meet and marry into other families. This has led to several instances where some of my distant cousins have become famous Americans.

I’ve written about some of them previously, but I thought it would be interesting to see if there were others that I could discover. Here is what I have found so far. I’ve left off the “x times removed” which would be needed to account for the difference in ages.

·       Louisa May Alcott (author) – 3^rd cousin

·       Aaron Burr (vice-president) – 2^nd cousin

·       Sara Van Alen Collier (wife of publisher Peter Collier) – 7^th cousin of my wife

·       Calvin Coolidge (president) – 7^th cousin of my wife

·       Jonathan Edwards (Puritan preacher) – great*7 uncle

·       Nathan Hale (patriot) – his first cousin married my great*7 aunt

·       Ernest Hemingway (author) – 9^th cousin
·       John Pierpont Morgan (banker) – 3^rd cousin

·       Hezekiah Pierrepont (founder of Brooklyn NY) – 2^nd cousin

·       James Lord Pierpont (writer of Jingle Bells) – 3^rd cousin

·       James Pierpont (founder of Yale University) – great*7 grandfather

·       Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of president) – 6^th cousin of my wife

·       Theodore Roosevelt (president) – 5^th cousin of my wife

·       Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) – 5^th cousin

·       Seth Thomas (clock maker) – 3^rd cousin

·       Mark Twain (author) – next door neighbor of Harriet Beecher Stowe above

·       Martin Van Buren (president) – 3^rd cousin of my wife

·       Noah Webster (dictionary) – 3^rd cousin of my 2^nd cousin

·       Eli Whitney (inventor) – husband of my 2^nd cousin