Falsely Pretending to be Related to Someone Famous

It goes the other way, too. I once had a neighbor whose surname was "Vanderbilt". He said that having such a name was a burden: every time he whipped out his credit card--with THAT name on it--prices rose. In fact he said that the only good side was getting excellent seating when he made restaurant reservations.
 
I think I'd rather see them in a reality show. We lock them all in a historic house and each week the group votes out the guy with the flimsiest proof. We could call it "Ancestor" instead of Survivor.
Oh I like that. How about the ancestor with the the worst reputation. We could call it the Skeleton Closet coming to a channel near you. Then others could research and challenge the "proof".
 
I think I'd rather see them in a reality show. We lock them all in a historic house and each week the group votes out the guy with the flimsiest proof. We could call it "Ancestor" instead of Survivor.
Oh I like that. How about the ancestor with the the worst reputation. We could call it the Skeleton Closet coming to a channel near you. Then others could research and challenge the "proof".
I would watch these shows! :bounce: :laugh: :D
 
I guess we all rush to claim the famous, the war heroes, the altruistic rich relatives; the celebrities in our family trees. We're not so fast to embrace the fact that we all possibly have murderers, robbers and various and sundry other classes of villains and other "scoundrels" alongside them...

About 15-years-ago I had a very elderly man from Cape Cod stop by my house and ask, "I'm looking for the Deacon Cornelius Waters House. I've come from Cape Cod, etc searching for it." I live in it. It's a very humble, working Colonial home from 1774 - not grand but very well built. We got talking and it turns out he's a distant cousin of my mother's side of the family. He was explaining about one of the line down there on the Cape being a murderer and "no good" and some of the piratical and thuggery side and I was thinking, "so that explains that side that my mother was so ashamed of.":cautious:

Or as my husband always says about reincarnation, "everyone claims to be Cleopatra but no one ever says they were the slave that emptied the chamber pots! :giggle:
 
There are examples of several people attempting to profit from Jesse James ancestry. Growing up I recall reading news stories in the St. Joe paper of one or two men even claiming to be James' son. As I recall, their claims were easily debunked by living James' descendants. Old Jesse's remains in the Kearny Cemetery have been dug up, examined and reburied I believe at least twice in my lifetime.

James' descendants maintain a genealogy website, including a Surname Index here: https://ericjames.org/html2014/surnames.html
I have no clue how accurate it is. It includes hundreds of surnames.

I saw one of the first shows, when DNA was becoming a thing, about Jesse James. He had a sister named either Zeldo or Zora (a Z name anyhow) that they were able to use DNA from that line. There had been a family that claimed "certain sure" they were from Jesse James. Well it turns out they weren't - the other family was. They kept begging the scientist to just say, "you said there was a 1 in a 3 million chance (I'm making numbers up) that you could be mistaken. Why don't you say that?" Over and over :O o:
 
How about the Bad Ancestor forum under history. We could have a few laughs and get help confirming our passed down family stories. I would love help confirming my family lore. How about you.
We can ask Mike if we can set up a separate subforum. If that's not feasible, we can start tagging them as "Bad Ancestor." I have a couple of threads I've started here that certainly qualify. :bounce: We might want to keep them CW-related if we can, though, just to make sure the forum stays focused.

Paging @CivilWarTalk for input. :smile:
 
I saw one of the first shows, when DNA was becoming a thing, about Jesse James. He had a sister named either Zeldo or Zora (a Z name anyhow) that they were able to use DNA from that line. There had been a family that claimed "certain sure" they were from Jesse James. Well it turns out they weren't - the other family was. They kept begging the scientist to just say, "you said there was a 1 in a 3 million chance (I'm making numbers up) that you could be mistaken. Why don't you say that?" Over and over :O o:
I wonder if it was Zerelda. His mom and wife both had that name too.
 
We can ask Mike if we can set up a separate subforum. If that's not feasible, we can start tagging them as "Bad Ancestor." I have a couple of threads I've started here that certainly qualify. :bounce: We might want to keep them CW-related if we can, though, just to make sure the forum stays focused.

Paging @CivilWarTalk for input. :smile:
yes only CW ancestors
 
What weird psychosis would you have to want to be connected to someone like that? It takes at least 500 years to bleach that out to make a claim, like Blackbeard.
They were fighting over his estate, such as it was. I think 2 of them claimed to be sons and 1 claimed to be a grandson. My favorite though was the person who then jumped in and didn't claim to be related but claimed to be a penpal and have a copy of Manson's will that just so happened to sign over everything to him. And he was a witness to the will, in addition to being the beneficiary. Yeah, that's not the slightest bit fishy, pal. :wink:
 
There was a book written some time ago by an Irishman ‘Dan Breen’, his book was called ‘My Fight for Irish Freedom’, my great grandfather and his brothers are mentioned in the book, they were some bad dudes, but that’s about it for my ‘Bad Ancestors’... here’s a picture of a family friend.

A500EBA9-54D6-4E9C-A934-72F77F780D49.jpeg
 
There was a book written some time ago by an Irishman ‘Dan Breen’, his book was called ‘My Fight for Irish Freedom’, my great grandfather and his brothers are mentioned in the book, they were some bad dudes, but that’s about it for my ‘Bad Ancestors’... here’s a picture of a family friend.

View attachment 345726
"looks rather like a blacksmith coming from work" is my new favorite wanted poster description. Several years ago, I used to transcribe the police gazettes from the UK and Australia for Ancestry.com, and they always had the best descriptions.
 
"looks rather like a blacksmith coming from work" is my new favorite wanted poster description. Several years ago, I used to transcribe the police gazettes from the UK and Australia for Ancestry.com, and they always had the best descriptions.
Looks like a blacksmith! ...just what did a blacksmith look like on his way home, I’d imagine that many Irishmen in the 1920s wore flat caps and were covered in dirt after a hard days work!
 
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