Those Famous Relatives?

The most "not quite famous" person I've been able to prove I'm related to is someone who handles snakes and alligators and was a contestant on one of those national TV talent searches. I know he's related because he visited my father years ago (and talked about himself a lot). The relationship was corroborated by a cousin who provided enough smaller details for me to confirm the relationship. To date, I've not found anyone else remotely close to "truly famous" in my tree. Now let's be honest, we're all related to someone famous in some way....but more likely than not, it's a very distant relationship and we're unlikely to share any significant DNA (if any at all). Sure, there are some folks who'll have more closely related famous matches...it's just how it works...but for many of us, sites promising to tell us our famous ancestors are only going to show very distant cousins.

Several years ago, Ancestry had an app called "We're Related". It was retired some time ago, but I always enjoyed looking at it. In fact, the app helped clarify the name of a great grandmother I was having a tough time with back then. It didn't necessarily "break down" a brick wall, just helped me get around an obstacle in my path. Still, I was grateful to have found a clue in an unexpected place. Despite the questionable accuracy of sites of this nature, it was still fun to poke around on. Alas...it is no more.

Recently, I was tempted by Geneanet's sister site, Geneastar. As far as the standard features, Geneanet (acquired by Ancestry in 2021) isn't terribly impressive. But Geneastar held a bit of allure for me. I thought it might be slightly better than the famous relatives you find on FamilySearch.org just because of the questionable accuracy of the one-world shared tree. We all know it has errors, and those errors will subsequently trickle down to the famous ancestors they say we might be related to. Geneastar is only available with a premium membership ($55US per year) and I decided to join, just for the entertainment value (not because I really expected to find anything amazing).

I tried several times to do a search, but each time, I was presented with a message saying the search would take a bit of time and I could leave the page and I'd be notified when it was done. Returning to the page always resulted in a banner saying a search was already in progress. I never received a single notification saying my search was complete and the banner never went away (unless I cancelled the search). To me, this indicated the search might never be finishing (perhaps something in the GEDCOM I uploaded was causing a problem?) 

I reached out on Facebook and was told premium members should submit a support ticket. I did this and was very pleased with the response time. However the representative simply said "we're sorry you don't have any matches with the Geneastar database". I wasn't really expecting much as far as famous relatives, but I did want an explanation why my search wasn't completing. After a little back and forth, I was asked to provide some screenshots. I did. The response was "This message shows up when you have a search for hints in process...We are sincerely sorry that you don't have any matches with the Geneastar database." They never did explain why the banner never went away. I already knew it was displayed because a search was in progress - the banner made it very clear. It doesn't matter to me if there were matches or not, I just wanted to know the site was actually doing the search at all and to verify it wasn't hung up in a never ending loop. I finally gave up and will most definitely not renew this subscription again! Lesson learned. I'm sure it works just fine for many people, but it certainly didn't for me.

The frustration led me to look for other entertainment value options and I landed on Relative Finder. It's still based on the FamilySearch tree (with all it's potential errors) but at least it's FREE and gave me a ton of possibilities. This begs the question, does Geneastar not have a decent size database of famous people if I'm not matching to any at all? FamilySearch matches me to over 50 potential famous people people, and Relative Finder to thousands (albeit mostly VERY distantly and a lot were LDS related. Still, with LDS filtered out, I had over 1000 matches). I have to assume either Geneastar is not nearly the site they hype it up be, or it simply doesn't work for me for some reason. In any case, I enjoyed checking out Relative Finder. They even allow you to export your results so you can open and manipulate them in a spreadsheet. They also include the common ancestor, theorized relationship and clicking on a match clearly presents the potential connection generation by generation. They include filters for everything from royalty to the Salem witch trials, providing a lot of room to narrow down potential results to areas of interest.

Though I won't spend any real time trying to prove any of these connections, I use these sites as a potential way to identify names or even parents of some of my more difficult to find ancestors. I never ever take the information at face value - everything MUST be proven! I just enjoy seeing the possibilities and if appropriate, maybe poking a little further into a name I haven't seen before just to see if it's viable. For me, it's not about saying I'm related to someone famous, it's about maybe finding a tiny clue to help me past a brick wall.

The moral of this post? Don't waste your money on Geneanet Premium (unless, perhaps, you're looking for information related to French ancestors). Stick with the free site Relative Finder or just use the activities tab on FamilySearch.org and choose the Famous Relatives option. I totally get I may not match with anyone in Geneastar's database, and it's ok.....but given the disparity between the results, it just seems awfully strange not to have even a single match. Have you found any famous relatives? If so, how did you discover them? Connect with me on social media and let me know! 

Image by Denys Vitali from Pixabay