Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The Spirit of Elijah

We were challenged at church on Sunday to begin/continue our family history search. I've been working on this for a while, but hit a road block with every branch of the family.

Last night I got a break.

I found the Johnson family. FINALLY! I've been searching for them for a few years now. I found out that the Bryants (my FIL's grandparents) have some interesting roots. They hail from Germany and England and Wales. The biggest fish in the bunch was finding Rhodri the Great, King of all North Wales (820 AD to 878 AD). He was the first Welch king to be labeled "Great" or "Mawr". Pretty cool stuff.

I got a bit tired of inputting all the names and dates and started to play around. I've recently been able to log into ancestry.com and found a fun gadget that can show you your famous ancestors. The problem with it is that it depends on the information that others have input on the One Tree Family site. The Williams/Fields families aren't connected, which is a HUGE bummer. But, I can see who I married into.

On the Johnson side we're related to:
George H.W. Bush
George W. Bush
Jimmy Hoffa
Howard Hughes
Clyde Barrow (Bonnie and Clyde)
Emily Dickinson
JP Morgan
Shirley Temple
Helen Keller
William Holden
Mae West
and several earlier US presidents

On Josh's mom's mom's side (the Pettingills) we are related to:
Several US presidents
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Samuel Morse
Daniel Wesson (of Smith and Wesson)
Robert Frost
Wild Bill Hickock
Bette Davis
Amelia Earhart
Georgia O'Keefe
Lucille Ball
Julia Child
John Hancock
and
John Steinbeck (soooo cool!)

I also found Josh's grandparents we just visited in San Diego (the Essarys). We are related to:
Mayflower passengers John Howland, Edward Tilly, and John Tilly
Ray Bradbury
John Browning
Jonathan Swift (another one that's sooooo cool!)
Humphrey Bogart
Katharine Hepburn
Agatha Christie
Henry David Thoreau
and even more various US presidents

This is fun. I've got to track down the Williams/Fields!!

2 comments:

Jabon said...

That is interesting as I spent my entire weekend doing family history as well. I am very interested to see my family lines entered in the search like you did. Is that a free thing or do I have to pay for the ancestry.com service... Maybe I will feed you guys desert if you come over and let me use your login as I don't want to pay for ancestry.billalot

Carina said...

Wow, that is awesome!!! No wonder you are so brilliant. I want to do something like that. If I don't come across some of those cool names. Can I just pretend? ;)