Turns out Jack Kerouac is my 10th cousin twice removed!

✯ Day 94 of Vintage 365 ✯

A good friend - and fellow genealogy enthusiast - of mine, Louise, once said something to me to the extent of, "If you're French Canadian (as she is, and I'm partially), it means you're 8th cousins with everyone else who's French Canadian". I smiled ear to ear when she said, as - while not strictly factual in every instance - there is more than a modicum of truth to the sentiment behind that statement.

My French Canadian blood hails from one of my maternal great-grandmother's family, and though my genealogical research over the past year and a quarter (I jumped headfirst into researching both sides of my family tree in January 2010 and have been diligently working at this deeply rooted passion of mine ever since) I've been able to trace her line back several centuries (and have discovered that some of my direct ancestors were amongst the first to leave France in the 1600s and settle in what would one day become the province of Quebec).

Thanks in no small part to the wonderful work of many passionate genealogists throughout history, there is a wealth of information available to help those interested in French Canadian/Acadian genealogy, some of which have helped me to add literally hundreds of names to my list of ancestors. As such, my French Canadian branch is the currently the largest in my tree.

Recently I've been using a fantastic feature on one of my favourite family tree websites, Geni.com, to see (for the sake of my own history loving curiosity) if I'm related to anyone famous, for which Geni has a searchable tree for (this feature allows site members who have a copy of their tree on the site, as I do, to check it against those of other profiles to see if two people can be connected in any way).

Thanks to my trove of French Canadian, as well as my German (for which I currently have the second largest number of ancestors in my tree), relatives, much to my delightful surprise, I've actually been finding a few fascinating connections between my tree and those of some rather famous folks.

Knowing that the two largest groups in my tree are French and German, I've been primarily concentrating on plugging names into Geni's search feature of well known people who are one of those two nationalities.

From painters to royals, writers to war heroes (part of me was hoping to be related to Lafayette, but alas, no connection was found - so far), for the past several days, I've been nabbing a few moments here and there to see which historical figures are hanging out amongst the diverse and far-reaching limbs of my family tree.

So far some of the more interesting finds I’ve made have included the following connections:
-Gorm the Old, the first historically recognized king of Denmark was my 33rd great-grandfather! (That's a rather marvelous find, as I never knew - but always secretly hoped - that I was descended from royalty!)

-Marie Antoinette is my 15th cousin 9 times removed (ok, I'm the first to admit that's a rather distant connection, but nevertheless, you can imagine how wide my Georgian era loving eyes lit up when Geni delivered that result!).

-Catherine the Great is my 14th cousin 13 times removed (again, not exactly close enough to hold hands on the ol' family tree, but given that I'm part Russian and have studied the history of Russian royalty quite extensively, this result made me especially happy).

-Bing Crosby is my 17th cousin 10 times removed (yes, we're still wayyyyy out there in the nether regions of the tree, but still...Bing is only my favourite vintage crooner of all time, so sufficient to say I squealed with joy when I learned about this connection!).

-Speaking of immensely famous singers, Celine Dion is my 9th cousin thrice removed (at the risk of sounding overly confident, I was almost certain that we'd be related, given that she's French Canadian - my friend really wasn't far off when she said what she did!).

-Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's seventh prime mister, is my 6th cousin 6 times removed (does having a distant relative on the Canadian $5.00 bill mean I'm entitled to all of them for free? :D).
-And speaking of people who dabbled in Canadian politics (in this instance with less favourable results, execution falling rather lower on the scale than becoming prime minster!), Louis Riel is my 6th cousin four times removed.

-Ok, this one is admittedly a massive stretch (and isn't technically a blood relative), but I'm including it here in honour of my paternal grandma, who always been a massive Elvis Presly fan. The King of Rock and Rock is my fifth great grandmother's husband's first cousin once removed's husband's third great nephew's wife's daughter's ex-husband.

-And for today, I saved what has to be my absolute favourite for last. The immeasurably cool, emphatically talented, beyond legendary beat poet and writer Jack Kerouac is my 10th cousin twice removed.

{Elegant black and white vintage photo of *my cousin* Jack Kerouac via Knol.}

I was a mere nine years old when I first discovered Kerouac's writing in the form of his classic - and arguably most famous - novel On the Road, which I poured over ever single word of before writing a "pick-any-book-you-wish" book report on it (to this day I still think my 4th grade teacher was slightly dubious that I wrote that report  myself, which is understandable given that gritty beat novels aren't exactly what most nine year olds choose as light reading, but I promise you, Mrs. Kuben, I wrote every last word of it).

For many years afterwards, as I explored the whole spectrum of 1950s and 60s beat writers and poets, I made a point of rereading On the Road each summer, devouring it from cover-to-cover with the same gusto and interest every time.

It's through my French Canadian blood that I can call Jack a distant cousin (though he was born in the States, both of his parents hailed from Quebec), tying one of the best, most original writers of the the 20th century to my family tree.

My experience lately with seeking notable names amongst my relatives - both living and departed - has been nothing short of superbly fun and wonderfully informative - and I definitely know that I'll keep checking for further matches for as long as I use that great genealogy website.

Should you happen to be a Geni.com member, too, or if you know of any famous folks in your tree as well, I would be deeply interested in hearing about them!