No worries--I'd be glad to help if I can. You can find some of my bona fides at these sites where I've helped others: http://www.wargs.com/other/felt.html, http://www.wargs.com/other/holloway.html, http://www.wargs.com/other/waterston.html, http://www.wargs.com/political/mccain.html, http://www.wargs.com/other/aniston.html, http://www.wargs.com/political/richardson.html, http://www.newenglandancestors.org/r...cles_gbr73.asp, http://www.newenglandancestors.org/r...cles_gbr83.asp, http://www.newenglandancestors.org/r...cles_gbr77.asp, http://www.newenglandancestors.org/r...cles_gbr78.asp, http://www.newenglandancestors.org/r...cles_gbr80.asp, http://www.countyhistorian.com/cecil...p/Jodie_Foster, http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb....08/peirsol.htm, http://blog.cleveland.com/pdopinion/...ts_and_ra.html. You can also take a look at what I have on my own ancestry here: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-...on2&id=I194038. Think about it, discuss with your family, then let me know what you want done and I'll try to do some digging for you, and hopefully get something good. I do better with New England families, but I've worked on southern ones, too (I'm not sure which you might fall into--Cokie Roberts is from Louisiana but she's also descended from William Brewster of the Mayflower. I traced her descent and posted it to Caleb Johnson who runs a Mayflower website a few years ago). For that matter, I've done a fair bit of work on Quebecois families, both in Canada as well as in Louisiana (I helped out earlier this year with data I had on Alanis Morissette which was used to show her kinship to Hillary Clinton). I would suggest that anything you want to send me that is personal (names, birth dates/places of living people), you send via email rather than post, just for your own safety's sake. I'm safety conscious myself, and even though RootsWeb in theory is supposed to privatize data for living people, and even though I've set the benchmark for that at 1920 (even though the 1930 census is and has been out for a few years now), I privatize that data by hand, just to make absolutely sure that my Mom, my brother, sister-in-law, nieces, aunts, uncles, grandpa and so on are all protected. I'm not sure exactly how you do that, but I know Rob has (or had) my email address, so I assume you probably have access to it, too, just make sure you tell me who you are if you go that route because I got inundated a year ago with more emails than I could handle, and with my niece's taking up so much time I generally don't have time to answer every email and I wouldn't want to miss yours. I help those who I actually know nowadays. Its funny (I think) but I was able to trace my kinship to two old childhood friends, one of whom I still keep in touch with (and is now an attorney at a good firm in Phoenix), found that my brother's best man is kin, that his mother and two of my Mom's other friends are kin, found that one of my professor's is kin (he was also the chair of my thesis committee, but neither of us knew we were related until nearly 10 years since I'd last sat in a class and he'd been retired for a few years himself) and there's been a few other interesting connections I've come across since I started this in '92. Gotta go get some sleep now, though--I had my nieces today, had some light housework to do, and have to be up at 6:10 tomorrow morning to do the whole thing over again. The life of an uncle, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world! Oh, heck, one last bit o' trivia: Bill Gates, Bill Hewlett, David Packard & Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the World Wide Web) are all kin. Cheers, Ms D.

Cool that would be awesome if I could have someone trace my line further back. I know that my family would like that to. I know that one side of my family came as indentured servants (don't know if I spelled that right.) The other side had a lot of money and were able to afford to come here without indenturing themselves.

Just to clarify: when I said you get what you pay for, nothing, I meant that I do not and never have charged anyone to look up their family tree for them. I have helped a couple people trace their family trees and get into the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (I'm not a member--too pompous at times for me; I did submit records to them on my nieces' behalf, which were accepted, but then I changed my mind when they copped that silver spoon entitlement attitude--know how many folks are descended from the people who came over on the Mayflower? Thousands upon thousands, and some of black, some Indian, some Asian, some white, some rich, some poor and so on) and other groups like SAR & DAR, but what I usually provide is an outline that you, or anyone else, could use to request the official documents or allow you to follow the trail I find using the census, &c. That's what I meant to say.

Hey there, Ms D.

First, don't sell yourself short. I saw your messages an hour or so ago and thought you might like to know who else is related to royalty, specifically to Princess Diana. Now, most (I think all, really) of these people are also related to each other, as well as to me, through our New England ancestry (small geographically, big families that spent an awful lot of their time recording what went where--a benefit, I suppose, of a culture based on trade rather than focused on large-scale farming). Hugh Hefner is Di's 9th cousin; Juliette Frette (Miss June 2008) is Di's 11th cousin once removed (she's also a great-granddaughter of Grand Ol' Opry founder George Dewey Hay, which is interesting because Hay's ancestors came from New England, not the south; likewise, while Col. Sanders was born in Indiana, his family came from Vermont--no Kentucky connection); Kalin Olson (Miss August 1997) is a great-granddaughter of Calif. Gov. Culbert Olson, and she's an 11th cousin once removed of Di; Deborah Driggs (Miss March 1990) was Di's 10th cousin once removed; Bebe Buell (Liv Tyler's mom and relative of pin-up artist Al Buell--same family, different branches) was a 12th cousin of Di's; Marguerite Empey (who was a centerfold twice, once in May 1955 & again in February 1956) was a 10th cousin once removed of Di's; Alice Denham, who went on to teach creative writing at City College of New York and was Miss July 1956 was a 9th cousin once removed of Di's; Pat Sheehan, Big Crosby's former daughter-in-law and former step-mother of Denise Crosby, was also a 10th cousin once removed of Diana's; Joan Staley, Miss November 1958, was a 15th cousin once removed of Diana's; Stella Stevens, the actress, was Miss January 1960 and was a 13th cousin once removed of Di's; Kristi Cline (Miss September 1999) was a 13th cousin, 4x removed of Diana's; Yvette Vickers (Miss July 1959) was a 15th cousin 1x removed of Diana's and Marilyn Monroe, the first Playboy centerfold Sweetheart of the Mont for December 1953, the premier issue, was a 10th cousin 1x removed of Diana's, so all those centerfolds from that one magazine are kin to presumably a future King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland. Wanna know more? Got your interest? How about this--Jenna Jameson is a 17th cousin 5x removed of Diana's, and Brandi Love is a 14th cousin 3x removed of hers, too. More? Charis Wilson, a nude model who worked for and then married Edward Weston, was a 9th cousin 1x removed of Diana's; Audrey Munson, the first women to appear nude in film (during the era of silent movies) was a 12th cousin 3x removed of Diana's; and Faith Bacon, a Ziegfeld Follies dancer who influenced later exotic dancers (including Blaze Star) with her creation of the fan dance, was a 9th cousin 2x removed of Diana's. Faith is also from the same family as Kevin Bacon (different branches--they're 9th cousins once removed), her 2nd cousin 1x removed was Gen. George S. Patton, and her great-grandfather was Henry Douglas Bacon, an endower of what became the University of California, Berkeley. And again, the vast majority of all of these women is at some point in just the past 400-500 years a cousin of ever other woman in that list. You said your family has been in America since the 1600s--a good share of those early colonists had to have more than a couple pennies to scratch together to make the voyage (by comparison, it would cost Ugo less to immigrate today than it did for our ancestors then), or if they came over in the service of someone wealthier, chances were that with so few Europeans living here, they wound up marrying someone within just a few generations whose family came from one of those wealthier families, and that means that more often than not, somewhere back within another 300-400 years there was someone royal. In other words, I would not at all be surprised to find you're A) related at some point to royalty & B) that you are descended from royalty. Its really humbling, I think, when you consider that people back then were willing to risk everything to come here to create something completely new with precious little chance of being able to go back home, let alone the ability to just send a letter or two to family left in the Olde Country. Now, one last bit o' trivia for a gentlewoman who deserved a number of those little blue boxes filled with sparkly goodies: Richard Gere's middle name is Tiffany. Sounds, well, weird, except that Tiffany's his mother's maiden name. Just as Faith Bacon is related to Kevin, and Bebe Buell's related to Al, Richard is related to Louis Comfort Tiffany, the jeweler. And anyone who would judge you by how you look, what you do for a living or anything like that isn't worth your time, energy or anything else, crown or not. A person can be born with a silver spoon in his or her mouth and a crown upon their head, but nobility and dignity are something we all are entitled to and I believe deserve regardless of the rest. Besides, you have certain, um, attributes that are more than vaguely similar to those of Harry's girlfriend . If you really want someone to look into your family tree more, I'd be happy to, if its something you really want done. I'm more informal than a pro genealogist, but you also get what you pay for, which is nothing. And, for what its worth, I do have a cousin (we share Sherman ancestry--his line stayed in England, mine came to New England) who lives in England and who is a professional genealogist (retired though) who is also a member of the Society of Genealogists in London. If I have a simple question, he's usually good enough to answer it or take a look in the records the Society keeps to see if there's an answer there. So there you have it, Danielle. Lots of women in similar lines of work to you with royal connections of their own, so like I said at the beginning, don't sell yourself short. WhyYou's signature really says it the best though. Cheers, amiga!

You know I should get you to trace my family ancestory further back. We've only gotten to the early 1600's...but honestly I would probably have to go over to England to figure out the rest.

Wow I don't know how you found that out...but that is to cool. Wish I were related to royalty although I don't think they would particularly care for me and my site

I was puttering around the house, easier when I owned a putter, but there you go, and on the TV came a commercial with Brooke Shields for VW and it occurred to me: you might be surprised who Brooke's related to. Well, her grandfather was tennis pro Francis Xavier Sheidls, and her grandma was Princess Marina Torlonia. Marina was a daughter of Prince Marino Torlonia, Duke of Poli & an American woman, Mary Elsie Moore. Through Marino, Brooke is a great-great-great-(&c.) granddaughter of Lucrezia Borgia. Now, if that wasn't enough, Mary Moore had a brother named Charles Arthur Moore whose granddaughter (that would be Brooke's 2nd cousin 1x removed) is Glenn Close. Now Glenn's father, William Taliaferro Close, was a step-son of Marjorie Meriwether Post, daughter of C.W. Post, the founder of the cereal company whose daughter is actress Dina Merrill, which made Glenn's dad and Dina step-siblings for a time. Alright, now how about this: Winston Churchill's mother was American, a daughter of a US Senator, which made Winston a grandson of both the Duke of Marlborough and a Senator, and through his mother, Winston was distantly related to his American counterpart, FDR. Moving on, Princess Diana's great-grandmother was also American, the daughter of an Ohio-born stockbroker who did business with the Vanderbilts and who was distantly related to Diana's future step-father, Stephen Bogart (son of Bogie & Bacall). By the way, Churchill's surname properly should have been Spencer. The elder branch of this family, upon inheriting the title, Duke of Marlborough, assumed the Churchill name in lieu of Spencer. Now with the Vanderbilts we get to Gloria Vanderbilt whose aunt, Consuelo, married Winston's cousin which makes CNN's Anderson Cooper a relative of the current Duke of Marlborough (Gloria's his mom). Sticking with this royal theme, Queen Elizabeth II, through her mother, is related to George Washington. The Queen Mum had ancestors who lived in Virginia when it was a colony, among whom were members of the Warner family. In fact, the Queen's Warner ancestress had a sister whose grandson was none other than Georgie. Sticking with QEII again, on her paternal grandmother's side, she's a direct descendant of a Romanian noble named Vlad Bassaraba, whose father, also named Vlad, was nicknamed Dracul; this younger Vlad had a half-brother known as Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad Dracula, which makes Dracula the Queen's great-great-(&)granduncle. Just as weird, the Bassaraba family were originally Asian--their ancestor was a warlord named Jochi Khan, one of Genghis's sons (at least that's the way the story goes). So you like weird bits of trivia, there you have an American actress descended from Lucrezia Borgia (daughter of a Pope) and the Queen of England and her relationship to Dracula and Genghis Khan. Who needs fiction when life is just too weird on its own?

Thanks for the note. I have a ton of trivia, actually, mostly about who's related to who. I don't know if you saw earlier this year when people were talking about the candidates and which famous people they are related to, but the guys who issued that news release are people I correspond with (I supplied the connection between Hillary & Alanis Morrisette). It started off as an exercise when I was an undergrad and was sorting through all the political factions among the English royals & nobles and realized just how intertwined they all are. Add to that, my grandma when I was little used to tell me all sorts of stories about the family tree, most of which I wasn't interested in. Eventually I did get interested to a degree, in part because its interesting to see who you're related to, partially because I like jigsaw puzzles and this is kind of a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and partially because it became something of an exercise to "resurrect" at least the names of my great-great-great-great grandparents, their siblings and so on. I saw in one of the things you wrote that your family was among the first in America; same with my Mom. My Dad's side is mostly recent immigrants from the Channel Islands, Sweden, Germany & Hungary (that area's now part of Romania now). One thing I that always occurs to me when I think about these things, is how just a few generations back, my ancestor was sitting next to so-and-so's ancestor, maybe a brother and sister, kicking each other under the table while their parents told them to knock it off. You go back far enough, though, and you find that not only was McCain related to Laura Bush, but that they're related to Sarah Palin, and that all three of them are also related to Barack. Its a bit amusing to me.

Thanks for clarifying where I got the wrong stuff on Rob. It was driving me nuts. Once upon a time, I wanted to be an analyst for the CIA and so exercises like genealogy or any other sort of research is something I use to keep my synapses firing (not always successfully).

And I'm glad you're going back to school. It helps discipline the mind, expose you to new things (yeah, like you need to expose yourself more ..no, wait, yes, you do need to expose yourself more, please! Sorry, couldn't resist ;-). I had the habit of changing majors and taking too heavy a load. When I was working on my MA though, I finished the whole thing in 2 semesters, taking lecture & seminar courses while researching, writing, proofing, editing & finally defending my thesis. I think I broke my brain, too, but that's another story. Thanks again for dropping the note. Oh, and I like "Creep", but if you want someone new, check out Storm and the Balls. Storm Large fronts the band; they're from Portland OR but also play at the Sweetwater in Mill Valley CA. I havbe a couple of her CDs (ones an EP with the Balls, the other was when she fronted Storm, Inc., both have versions of "Beautiful" on them, which is just a really good, honest song.

Cheers--

Oh that's awesome....I totally love learning random facts and stuff. I'm always buying those list books that have random stuff in it. I love Radiohead btw...Idioteque is the best song ever. When I go over to Rob's house to do work I will play it and he goes absolutely nuts. I love my toys and yeah the original is always going to be the best...but sometimes it's fun to experiment. You read about Rob being married on the non-members about me section. To tell you the truth though most of that stuff is bs. You can find out the real facts on the members about me section of FTVGirls.com. This will be my third time going to school. I graduated in 05 and would've graduated college next year if I went to college directly out of school. I just pushed myself to hard the first and second time, tried to take to many classes and was going to work to. That was a disaster in the making.

Hi ya, Danielle--

Just a bit of tattoo-related trivia for you. Did you know that a well-known trademark is based on the tattoo of the company's founder? The red star that graces Macy's bags is based, I've been told, on the red star tattoo Rowland Hussey Macy got when he was a whaler. After leaving the sea behind and founding the store that bears his name, the company adopted the red star to recognize the Nantucketer. Another bit o' trivia, but William H. Macy come from the same family (different branch) as R.H. Macy, both families going back to Nantucket. Just silly trivia. Hasta la bye-bye!