Falsely Pretending to be Related to Someone Famous

Then there's the relative who'd be considered interesting by part of the population, comparable to Genghis Khan by another part.

I've never gotten that- pretending to be related to someone you're not. I mean, YOU'D know. Once had to tear apart the tree on Ancestry. We keep it just to have someplace to put family information for everyone, photos, etc. Some idjit wanted to be related to someone ( I forget who, and we're not, either ) so stretched dates, names, etc. and created this ridiculous myth using Ancestry. It's not like anyone gets a laminated card " I'm related to xxxxx " and you get to have a parade.

PLUS look how weird other people are about their important relatives- I've had more than one buttinski send me an email about a guy whose last name is Howard in our tree. Just a guy. Emails always make SURE I know OUR Howard is NOT of royal Howard lineage. a. Didn't think so b. really, really, really don't care either way.

Grandfather swiped a train once. True story. He'd apparently always wanted to know if he COULD drive a train. Transpires he could and was a little surprised everyone got all excited about the experiment.
 
I was led down a false trail in my genealogy for a while, because a branch of the family that became minor nobility (as the Herberts) seem to have decided that being descended from Welsh farmers wasn't good enough for them, and rewrote their pedigree to show how they had been Normans, complete with a line going right back to Charlemagne. Fortunately, I ran into a paper debunking it.

The reality is more interesting-- partly for being real, but also partly because the *real* line appears to have a link to the Tudors, which makes Queen Elizabeth I a possible nth-cousin x-times removed. (Of course, this hadn't happened yet at the time the Herberts invented themselves a more illustrious ancestry.)
 
The glitch in my family tree is all the folks who want to link us to the original Jamestown settlers. Getting that connection to work requires one ancestor to father another... 7 years after his death. Pretty neat trick for the 17th century. Thanks to the Union soldiers who burned the courthouses, we'll never know exactly when our first family member came to the US. And, so what?
 
Then there is that Australian sheep farmer who never bragged about his name or ancestry, he held the official title of ‘ Michael Edward Abney-Hastings, the 14th Earl of Loudoun.’ it turns out that he was actually the King of England and his official title should have been ‘His Majesty Michael I, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His Other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.’
Now...that is something to brag about.


Sadly Michael Hastings passed away in 2012
 
Then there is that Australian sheep farmer who never bragged about his name or ancestry, he held the official title of ‘ Michael Edward Abney-Hastings, the 14th Earl of Loudoun.’ it turns out that he was actually the King of England and his official title should have been ‘His Majesty Michael I, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His Other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.’

Now...that is something to brag about.

I saw an online video debunking that... google "Useful Charts" on Youtube. (The same Youtuber does a ton of videos on the pedigrees of most European royal families and their interconnections, including the fact that the current Queen's ancestry is more English than German, despite rumors to the contrary...)
 
I saw an online video debunking that... google "Useful Charts" on Youtube. (The same Youtuber does a ton of videos on the pedigrees of most European royal families and their interconnections, including the fact that the current Queen's ancestry is more English than German, despite rumors to the contrary...)
Its an absolutely genuine claim and one which has been proven, his ancestor was Henry Hastings aka...Henry VIII
 
From what I saw, there is a flaw in the claim, but it's not something I have memorized... I encourage you to check out the Youtube analysis.
Thank you, I’ll definitely take a look, the first time that I knew about the claim to the throne was when TV celebrity ‘Tony Robinson’ investigated the claim, he had some of the best archivists look into the Plantagenet family tree and their conclusion was that the Hastings family were the rightful heirs to the throne but of course history or rather the war of the roses dictated otherwise.
 
My wife's grandfather was a BOOTH.
Here is a photo of one of her ancestors from mid-1800's.
booth5.jpg


During my early days of genealogy research, I did some research on the BOOTH and found a book on that family. They had a family tree for John Wilkes Booth and his father and showed that there were NO male descendants after 2 generations. It also stated that some of the BOOTH family changed their name to BOOTHE just to show there was no connection at all.
 
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...

Or just a bunch of peasants. Villeins rather then villains.
 
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...
A few years ago, one of the CWT moderators ‘Chellers’ (I’m pretty sure that it was Chellers) happened to mentioned that she had an ancestor whom had been found guilty of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, I thought then as I do now that I wish that I had an interesting character like that in my family tree. I expect that if I were to trace my family tree back to the 1600s it would be full of poachers, peasants and tax evaders...which was pretty much how the vast majority of people survived back then.
 
My wife's grandfather was a BOOTH.
Here is a photo of one of her ancestors from mid-1800's.
During my early days of genealogy research, I did some research on the BOOTH and found a book on that family. They had a family tree for John Wilkes Booth and his father and showed that there were NO male descendants after 2 generations. It also stated that some of the BOOTH family changed their name to BOOTHE just to show there was no connection at all.

I knew a guy in my Army Reserve unit who said he was descended from Edwin Booth (John's older brother). Is that a possibility?
 
Back to the shyster, who owned a small junk/relic shop/"museum" in Jefferson, Texas, where he regaled patrons with the story of his famous "ancestor" during the annual Pilgrimage held there. Unfortunately for him, he was finally outed when someone realized that Armstrong's known descendants didn't match the supposed pedigree, and he soon disappeared from the local scene and his shop traded hands. @Rusk County Avengers may have additional information about this character and his possible motives!

Sorry, ain't been around, LOT to catch up on.

I know of the shyster, I've only ever heard of him never encountered him as far as I know, though I do know who to ask. From what I can recall, he ran a bookshop, but was widely known locally as one. I think he closed his shop due to an illness, or he passed on to his reward, though I won't swear to it. I don't know of the sword's fate, I wouldn't be surprised if it still resides in Jefferson though.
 
No Booths in my family but we do have Garretts from Virginia and I remember my dad saying we were related to the Garretts who owned the farm where John W. was killed. Turns out we're not related to those Garretts (that line has been well documented). Oh well. But hey - several of our guys were friends and neighbors of Thomas Jefferson. Almost as good.:D

I've never really understood the idea that one somehow inherits 'credit' from ancestors (e.g. the whole DAR thing). Who our ancestors are is just a repeated flip of the genetic coin. What they did can certainly be very interesting and might have affected how we ended up being where we are but it doesn't reflect on our character. We all have to earn our own way. I find ancestor worship unattractive.
 
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