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How to Find Out if You Have Famous Ancestors

Do you want to know how to find out if you have famous ancestors? In this post, you’ll find tips and tricks for learning about the famous people in your family tree.

If you rub shoulders with people who are into genealogy and family tree research long enough, you will eventually run into someone  – and several someones, most likely – who claim to have famous or infamous ancestors. 

And let’s face it, we all like finding famous ancestors in our tree. Even if they are really far back, it’s just kind of neat to imagine that we are descended from someone notable in history.

I have a few famous ancestors in my past, and I’m sure that you do, too. What most people don’t know is exactly who those famous ancestors were, and what made them famous.

How to Find Out if You Have Famous Ancestors

You’ll find ideas and thoughts about the topic in this post.  If you have any ideas, or if you have found out anything really cool – or not so cool – about your ancestors, I would love to hear about it. 

Start building a family tree to find famous ancestors

If you are really interested in finding out whether some of your ancestors were well-known in their lifetime, the first thing that you should do is make sure to build your family tree.

If you haven’t started a family tree, this is the first step in finding out whether you have anything noteworthy or interesting in your family’s past.  You are almost sure to discover something interesting – perhaps even a famous person or two.

My favorite place to build a family tree is on Ancestry, since once you start the tree, you get record hints, and information can be filled in automatically from them.  It’s really much easier than you might think.

A few tips on building a tree to search for famous roots:

  • Be as thorough as possible – don’t skip any of your family lines. Some people only trace their surname, which leaves out most of our ancestors.
  • Read all records on sites like Ancestry and Family Search carefully for clues

Check for “popular” lines of your family tree

On Ancestry, or on some of the other websites for family tree building, after you build back a few generations, you will start to find that your ancestors start to show up in several family trees.  This is because of simple mathematics.  

The further back you go, the more potential descendants there are, and the more descendants there are, the more potential genealogy researchers there could be in the family. 

If you stumble upon an ancestor several generations back that shows up in what seems to you to be a large number of family trees (like more than 15, for example), this might mean – though not always – that the reason that so many people are interested in this line of the tree is that there is something really cool going on, either with that ancestor, or further back in his/her line.

In other words, so many people might be interested in researching the line of their tree that they share with you because there is someone famous in it. They might know something about your shared ancestry that you haven’t yet discovered.

So, if you find a paper trail, definitely research it until the end to see where it leads.

Use Google to find famous ancestors

This seems like a really simple idea, but once you start building your tree, Google your ancestors.  All of them. 

I’ve learned some very fascinating about some of my ancestors through simple internet searches. The best part about this tip is that you can do this for free – no need to pay for a subscription.

Much of what I learned wasn’t something that would have popped up in a family tree search, so it pays to think outside of the box!

Here are some tips for using Google to find information about your ancestors:

  1.  Use quotation marks around names or terms that you want Google to specifically search for.  For example, I have a great-great-great-great grandmother named Maria Applegate.  If I want to search for her on Google, I will put into the search bar “Maria Applegate” to only get results that have that exact search term in it.
  2. Enter in as many key words as you know or want to search for for your relative.  For example, if I know that Maria Applegate was born in New Jersey in 1815, I will enter it like that into the search bar:
Using Google to Find Ancestors, example of searching for Maria Applegate in Google

Search for your ancestors in old newspapers

When you are in the process of being through and researching everything that you possibly can, don’t overlook the possibility that you can find information about your more recent (past 4-6 generations) in newspapers.  There are many places online that you can access old newspaper records. 

I have been able to find really random things online about my great-great grandparents, for example, and you will also be surprised about what you find. The definition of “newsworthy” has certainly changed over the past 100-150 years, and so you might find surprising detail in old articles that mention your ancestors.

Newspapers.com is a great place to search old newspapers. When I first got my subscription, I was literally obsessed with finding details about people from my family tree.

You can use the following sponsored link to get your Newspapers.com one-week FREE trial: Try Newspapers.com free for one week!

Find Famous Ancestors – Test Your DNA

You know what is even better than a really well-researched family tree that documents your lineage back to a famous ancestor?  A really well-documented family tree that is backed up by scientific proof! 

You can do a simple DNA test and using some simple strategies, prove that you are related to other descendants of that ancestor.

Using this strategy, I have been able to verify genealogical research on several lines in my family as many as 8-10 generations back into history.  Testing your older family members is also a great strategy for this, as well. 

My grandmother and two great-uncles have done DNA tests, and their results help me “reach” much further back than I ever would be able to just with my own results.

You can get a DNA test from any of the companies that I recommend below. I’ve tested myself or family members with all of them!

You can order a DNA test using any of the links below. I may receive a very small commission that helps me support this site, and it is at no extra cost to you, so thank you!

Try Relative Finder from Family Search

Family Search has a really neat tool that analyzes your Family Search tree to compare your ancestors to lists of famous world figures.

In order to use this tool, you will need to have a free account with Family Search. You will also need to upload or build a decent-sized tree on the site.

You can access the free Relative Finder tool by clicking on the following link:

Check the Pilgrim Database to see if your ancestors were on the Mayflower

If you have already built a family tree and suspect that some of your lines go back to some of the first groups of people from the British Isles to arrive to North America, you could check the Pilgrim Database. You are most likely to have ancestors among these individuals if you are able to trace your family tree back to New England to the early 1600s.

The Pilgrim Database was compiled with information from a partnership between General Society of Mayflower Descendants and New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Checking this database isn’t free, but it might save you a lot of time:

Conclusion

Once you are done with all of the steps on this post, you might have found some interesting, famous, or infamous ancestors.  But what I am sure that you will have done is built a really amazing family tree for yourself. 

No matter what you learn, or if you learn something you weren’t really expecting, you will have some cool stories to tell about your family history.

Thanks for stopping by!  Let me know your story in the comments!

Share the knowledge!

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Harold Scott

Friday 6th of May 2022

I was a late in life [WOOPS!] baby. All my grandparents were dead except my mother's mom, born on an Indian Reservation, who lived several hundred miles away and was stone deaf. SO, I never heard anything about my ancestry. My wife gave me a DNA test as a Father's Day gift, and imagine my shock, finding out that we had significant lines coming from both sides of the family. My father's mom who died 10 years before I was born, had an incredible French Canadian & French pedigree, and my Mom's included BOTH English & Scottish Kings! I doubt my parents even knew that there were Knights, Kings & Queens, Revolutionary War soldiers, and both Mayflower and Jamestown settlers in their history. It is fun to read about your ancestors on Britannica Online OR Wikipedia. I also LEARNED that in addition to the "British" and French heritage there were Scandinavian and Mexican lines. Now I encourage everyone I know to have their DNA tested. BTW, I was astounded to see one possible ancestor I was researching showed up in 400 Trees!! Still, don't know why, because he is not that "historical???"

Lily

Monday 6th of December 2021

The Famous People You Are Related To feature is completely worthless to me. It shows a ton but because we must have a “shared tree” and people related to me apparently don’t do their genealogy with any fact checking or sources, it’s absolutely 100% wrong.

Mercedes

Thursday 6th of January 2022

I agree that research is the best way to determine whether you are related to someone famous. There certainly are many trees with errors out there, for sure. Sincerely, Mercedes

Ravae Loper

Friday 5th of November 2021

Ok, so this is freaky! I was reading this and saw your great grandmothers name and thought Applegate isn’t that common… I wonder if she is from the east coast since I live in south Jersey and know an Applegate from my teenage years in our social circle… then I saw New Jersey and I was floored! So neat how small this world is! It’s so common to just either feel like our great bloggers are living IN THE CLOUD… floating in the sky just typing away… 😂

Martin

Monday 7th of June 2021

Have a look at Entitree.com you can build a tree of famous people

Hester

Friday 20th of November 2020

May I just say what a relief to find somebody that truly knows what they're talking about on the internet. You certainly understand how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More people need to check this out and understand this side of the story. It's surprising you aren't more popular because you surely have the gift.

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