I was watching a recent episode of "Finding Your Roots" where one of the celebrities being featured was Glenn Close (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vknCSNuc25E). At 17:20 they were following one of her ancestral lines back and ended at John Strong (1605/6-1699). I immediately thought, "he's in my family tree!" I paused the program to check my tree and, sure enough, he is my great*10 grandfather.
That was exciting enough - to know that Glenn (who is only a year older than myself) is a distant cousin. But I was unprepared for what came next (at 19:35) as they revealed that there are over 100,000 descendants of John and that some other important individuals who Glenn (and by extension myself) are related to through the Strong family - FDR, Clint Eastwood, and [drum roll please] Princess Diana.
I've not done the detailed analysis to see exactly how these individuals are descended from John Strong, but I trust that the researchers of this TV show have done their homework.
I had previously documented (https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/presidential-connections.html) how I am connected to ALL the US presidents [not sure about Joe Biden yet], but this connection is 30 generations ago, so this connection to FDR is much closer. And as my wife is a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt (https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2018/02/genealogy-story-roosevelt-connection.html), so this is also a case of my cousin marrying my wife's cousin. Made my day.
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