My great-great grandfather was a silent movie actor and a lion tamer. He was a trainer for one of the lions that appears before MGM movies! Share the brightest buds in your family tree below.

#1

One of my ancestors (according to ancestry the DNA test people) was the priest on the Mayflower!

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#2

Oh wow, I have a lot of brilliant and interesting family members. For instance a Nobel laureate in physics, the co-founder of the Dutch branch of the WWF (the WNF), and a medical professor, who after his retirement became a doctor in philosophy as well, and kept publishing scientific articles till well in his eighties.
But my favourite ancestor has always been the great-great-uncle who was a pirate 🏴‍☠️

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#3

My grandpa once did an ENORMOUS family tree, and he found out that one of our ancestors was the first knight for a new kingdom. Pretty badass if you ask me.

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#4

I can't post all mine because most have my surname and I want to keep a level of anonymity.

Martha Washington. First first Lady.

A famous explorer from France.

A banjo player from the Grand Ole Opry

A baseball player that played for the Cardinals, Dodgers, and the Braves.

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#5

Apparently, I'm distantly related to Princess Diana. I t was so cool to find out.

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#6

One of my great great uncles or something was there during the bombing of pearl harbor. He was a painting a house or something similar when he fell off his ladder. He was passed out through the bombing.
Another, not definite one, but a family myth is that we are related to Pocahontas. It's probably not true, but it's fun to think about.

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#7

My grandparents have been doing Ancestry DNA for quite a while now and they doing out that my 6 or 7 times great grandfather was friends with George Washington when he lived in Virginia and when Washington became the general. I just think that’s pretty cool

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#8

My dad was on the Medtronic engineering team that created the first pacemaker.

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#9

My grandma, apparently she was a song writer and was married to some famous trumpet player for a while, and even traveled with the Rolling stones. At least so she told me :p

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#10

A great-great-great (I think?) uncle of mine was in the mob

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#11

On my grandfathers side Mary Queen of Scots is on the family tree but I’ve meet other people who have said they the same so properly not as interesting

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#12

I have a lot of famous family members!!! My grandad was a lion tamer and my granma used to run a circus. My most proud one is the my aunt has travelled across the world and is now also taming lions! Ik weird fam. I also used to help out with the circus(used to trapeze) !

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#13

We have king Louie the ??? Somewhere in our family tree

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#14

My some amount of greats grandma was a part of the King's Daughters, a group of 800 french women sent over to 'New France'. It happened in 1663-1673. None of them were royal. In fact, most of them were orphans and poor people. No one important would miss them if they died.

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#15

I'm distantly related to Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher. Debbie knew my great grandma they were cousins. I never met any of them.

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#16

My grandfather was in Vietnam and Korea

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#17

The man who saved Abraham Lincolns life as a child

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#18

My great great great grandfather (I think that's the right amount of greats) was native american, but he could pass as white. So he did. He stole an identity, robbed a few banks, married my great great great grandmother and hid his past from her. She found out when a cousin of his found him. He left with their kids and became a groundskeeper (or farmer or something, I can't remember exactly). So yeah.

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#19

Since middle school, my idol has been architect Frank Lloyd Wright (I am also an architect). Imagine my glee when I found out, as an adult, he’s a third cousin once removed on my mother’s side.

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#20

my great grandpa. hes from Puerto Rico, and one day grabbed his brother, hopped in a boat, and paddled the boat all the way to Florida. they went through the Bermuda Triangle, just not the whole thing, or through the middle. just a small portion of it. still pretty cool to me!

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#21

Got three. Francis Scott key. On my moms side. Harriet Beecher Stowe. On the Beecher/moms side. And Lizzie Borden cousin side.

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#22

My grandfather, Edwin Webster, is 97 years old. He was born in Canada, traveled west and then south to Northern California with his family as a child. He worked at a canning factory as a child so his family could eat and went on to gain his US Citizenship by joining the US Army during WWII. He served in Germany and Poland. He saw Hitler. He saw the atrocities. He was one of the people who physically pulled people out of the concentration camps during the Holocaust. He came home and put himself through college (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) by building individual juke boxes and selling them to local restaurants to put on their tables. He didn’t finish college because the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hired him to work on projects headed to space. He worked for several companies, building and testing radios for NASA. His radio was on the Challenger and he was monitoring it when the shuttle exploded. He says no man should have to ever hear the sounds of those astronauts screaming. He retired and worked on his own projects at home and spent so much time with his grandkids. He turned 97 on February 18th and is still creating and inventing.

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#23

One of my cousins knows a lot about our family’s history, and found out one of our ancestors came over on the Mayflower!

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#24

My grandfather’s aunt ran the most salubrious brothel in Sydney.

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#25

On my dads side of the family, people founded part of the norther region of Minnesota, the Merritt Brothers.

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#26

Hm….I believe on my mother’s side of the family, President Buchanan is my distant relative. With the addition that another relative was also (might?) a First Lady and a general in the American Revolutionary War.

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#27

You can search my uncle, my dad, and my grandpa, and get results. I was the only person in my 3rd grade class that this works with, and it’s mostly still true today with my current homeroom. The results are just Ambata, WWF, FAB, and RFN (more the first 2)

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#28

No one famous in my family but some interesting ones. One of the earliest family members to come to Australia was on one of the first orphan ships that came from Ireland during the potato famine. Her ship is listed on the memorial at Williamstown in Victoria.
Another one I find interesting, but also tragic was one of my grandfather's brothers. During WW2 the five eldest (out of 8) signed up to fight. The officials decided five was the limit for one family and the rest needed to stay farming. Unfortunately this meant the 6th brother was refused entry. This was particularly hard as he was a twin and his twin was brother number 5. After a while he couldn't take the devastation and loneliness anymore and left home and wasn't heard from for years.

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#29

My Aunt is probably the funniest and most unpredictable person in my family. Out of nowhere she will say the most outlandish things. For example, we were once at a restaurant for a family dinner (mothers day, birthday, something...) and as we are all filing out, weaving through other tables to leave she turns around to me and my mother and says "You know, penises are just ugly..." That's it, end of conversation. She's also an AMAZING cook. She's won numerous awards and is always working on some new and different recipe.

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#30

Apparently I’m related to some Scottish kings on my mums side don’t know much but my grampa says they were bros

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#31

Joe DiMaggio is my third cousin. He grew up in the same small town as my parents. When my mother was a kid, he would play street baseball with my his cousins, my great uncles.

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#32

I am sure my ancestors were all Irish peasants.

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#33

My grandmother is Nyla Sahmie she is famous within the hopi tribe for her pottery. (Native American)

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#34

My great-great-grandmother (maybe even tripple-great) reached 104 years. On her last Birthday she got interviewed by a local newspaper. In the article she said that she had survived five wars. I went through history-books but couldt not find that fifth war. Plus at least one of the four other wars did not take place were she lived.
Always stay critical when a 104-year-old lady starts telling stories from the past. ;-)

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#35

Distantly related to William Penn and Betsy Ross on my mom's side of the family.

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#36

My family believes we are related to Marie Curie because we have a grandparent who shares her maiden name (Sklodowska)

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