Are you related to someone famous?
By John L. Hoopes
April 2009
There is a website on the internet, found at
http://roots.cs.byu.edu/digroots which shows how one is related to a number of famous people, including LDS prophets, apostles, presidents of the US, signers of the US Constitution, and even pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower in 1620.
The website was developed at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo and uses the Ancestral File (AF), which includes names submitted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) from about 1980 on. Every name in AF has an ancestral file number (AFN), and with that number one can go to the website to find famous ancestors. The AFN for John L. Hoopes is 76PF-P7, and for Myrna Gale Hoopes it is 5SDL-P5.
The website shows that the first LDS Prophet, Joseph Smith, is my 5th cousin, 5 times removed*. He is Myrna’s 4th cousin, 6 times removed. All of the famous people shown on the website to whom we are related are cousins, except for, interestingly, four pilgrim fathers who came over on the Mayflower in 1620, and all of the ancient kings and queens of Europe. I don’t put as much trust in our relationship to royalty as I do to people who were born later. It also seems that just about “everyone” is related to the kings and queens.
In fact, if you go back very far, everyone is pretty much related to everyone. For example, take the Mayflower pilgrims, who sailed in about 1620. Assuming that a generation is 20 years, and that each couple produces 3 children (and that spouses are assumed to come from nowhere), there are about 3^19 people, or, 1,162,261,467 direct descendants of a given person on the Mayflower. There were a little over 100 passengers on that ship, so it is very mathematically possible that everyone on earth is a direct descendant of a Mayflower passenger. Now, they ended up marrying each other, as did their children, but, many also had more than three children. Further, given that this calculator does not limit itself to direct descendants, it is likely that you will find yourself related to someone *famous*. Give it a try.
That said, my direct relationship to the four Mayflower pilgrims, or travellers, as the website calls them, was of more interest to me because they are all 10th or 11th great-grandfathers, not cousins. The website displays the pedigree charts showing how we are related. They all come through my father’s (Grover Lamro Hoopes) side of the family.
I had never studied the Mayflower, other than hearing about it in grade school, until I learned about my relationship to the pilgrims (some of whom called themselves “saints”), who left England to come to America, to escape religious persecution. Their stories are inspiring and caused me to appreciate the faith of these ancestors who paved the way for our ancestors in the 1830s to join the LDS Church. There is, of course, much about the Mayflower and each of the pilgrims on the internet. Just Google a name followed by “Mayflower” and one will find a plethora of information, including biographies, pictures, etc. I have come to trust Wikipedia as an internet source for relatively “unbiased” (because it can be changed) information, which also gives sources and is easy to use. What follows are very brief biographies of our four grandfathers who came over on the Mayflower, mostly taken from Wikipedia.
Peter Browne (often spelled Brown) was born about 1594 in Dorking, Surrey, England, and may have been a carpenter or machinist. There were a total of 102 passengers on the Mayflower, including the crew. They intended to sail from Southampton to the northern parts of Virginia, but due to severe weather conditions, they landed off Cape Cod. Peter was one of the 41 men who signed the famous Mayflower Compact on November 11, 1620. There is an interesting story in Wikipedia about how Peter went hunting and became lost in the woods after their dogs began to chase deer. Sailing as a 26 year old single man, during that first year Peter married Martha, the widow of a ship-master. Because Peter and Martha survived the first winter, when many died, they were present for that first Thanksgiving in America, which we remember each November.
Stephen Hopkins was born about 1582 and was a tanner and merchant. His voyage on the Mayflower was not his first trip to America. He made a previous trip in 1609, eleven years earlier. During this first trip he attempted to start a mutiny and was sentenced to death, but he was spared for the sake of his wife and children, still in England. He spent nine months on the island of Bermuda building ships and then sailed as a castaway to Jamestown, where he stayed about two years before returning to England. Returning on the Mayflower with his family, the Hopkins family is considered one of the First Families of Virginia. The story of the “Sea Venture” shipwreck (and Hopkins’ mutiny) is said to be the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” (We are also related to Shakespeare according to the website.) Back in Virginia, Hopkins was elected the ambassador for native relations, and when Squanto arrived in Plymouth, he lived with the Hopkins family.
John Howland was born about 1599 in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England. As a young man, John became a servant to John Carver, a Puritan minister who joined with William Bradford in bringing his congregation from Leiden, Netherlands, to America on the Mayflower. During the dangerous voyage, our ancestor, John, was thrown overboard, but managed to grab a topsail and was hauled back to safety. John lived with the Carvers, who survived the terrible first winter, but the following spring, on an unusually hot day in April, Governor Carver came out of his cornfield and died. His wife soon died, and they had no children, so our ancestor, John, inherited their entire estate. In 1623/24 (years are often stated this way because they were changing calendars at that time), John married Elizabeth Tilley, who was the 17 year-old daughter of John Tilley (which makes him one of our grandfathers). Her parents died the first winter and so Elizabeth was “adopted” by Governor Carver. John later became William Bradford’s Assistant Governor, and by 1633, when he was 34 years old, he owned a considerable amount of land in America. He and Elizabeth had ten children. When he was buried on “Burial Hill,” (of which you can take a virtual tour on the internet) he was described in the official records as a “godly man and an ardent professor in the ways of Christ.” His descendants include several US presidents and prophets, including Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, as well as other world leaders, e.g., Winston Churchill. With proof from this website we could join the prestigious The Pilgrim John Howland Society, based in Plymouth, Mass.
John Tilley, was born about 1571 in Henlow, Bedfordshire, England. He and his wife, Joan Rogers, embarked on the Mayflower along with their teenage daughter, Elizabeth, and John’s brother, Edward. Unfortunately, during the first winter, John and Joan both died, leaving Elizabeth, who married another pilgrim, John Howland (see above paragraph). Myrna is also related to these pilgrims, through her father’s side.
*Cousin (also known as “first cousin”): Your first cousins are the people in your family who have two of the same grandparents as you. In other words, they are the children of your aunts and uncles.
Second Cousin: Your second cousins are the people in your family who have the same great-grandparents as you, but not the same grandparents.
Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cousins: Your third cousins have the same great-great-grandparents, fourth cousins have the same great-great-great grandparents, and so on.
Removed: When the word “removed” is used to describe a relationship, it means that the two people are from different generations. You and your first cousins are in the same generation (two generations younger than your grandparents), so the word “removed” is not used to describe your relationship to your first cousins. The words “once removed” mean that there is a difference of one generation. For example, your mother’s first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. This is because your mother’s first cousin is one generation younger than your grandparents and you are two generations younger than your grandparents. This one-generation difference equals “once removed.” Twice removed means that there is a two-generation difference. You are two generations younger than a first cousin of your grandmother, so you and your grandmother’s first cousin are first cousins, twice removed.