In the late 1980s and early 1990s Gary Boyd Roberts wrote a column for the NEHGS called Notable Kin. These articles were later published as a two-volume work by Carl Boyer.
In these columns Roberts traced the ancestry of famous people and showed you that you share ancestors with them and were hence cousins. This combined with his Ancestry of the American Presidents lent itself such that anyone with significant New England ancestry would find cousins.
Some such distant cousins of mine include the wife of Rudyard Kipling, Sir Robert Laird Borden, prime minister of Canada, Queen Camilla (which I've already written about), Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Robert Treat Paine, Josiah Bartlett, Nicholas Gilman, Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King, and Oliver Wolcott, all signers of the Declaration of Independence, Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, John Greenleaf Whittier, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball, Jane Fonda, and a host of other celebrities and notable personages.
But what of my Slovak half? Well, there are only two notable people of Slovak descent of whom I am acquainted. Paul Newman was half Slovak on his mother's side. But she was Roman Catholic and I would share no ancestors with her. Andy Warhol's family came from Slovakia but were ethnically Carpathian Rusyns and therefore not Slovak at all. I have mentioned Juraj Balaz, the soccer player and so too, there is Jan Skok, a hockey player. They both bear names of men that I descend from in the 19th century. It's anyone's guess how we are related.
Of course, there are only 5.4 million Slovaks in Slovakia and let's say another million people in the U.S. of Slovak heritage (number may be higher). That's not a big pool of people to pluck celebrities from.
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