My sister does family geneology and while speaking with her she revealed to me my great great grandmother was a Madame and owned her own brothel. It made me chuckle to say the least. Kind of notorious I guess in a small way, not something to bring up at the dinner table. So it made me curious as to if other forum members know of any famous realtives in their lineage. Anyone have a famous or infamous Civil War, WWI etc. soldier, an explorer, scientist, witch, gangster, bank robber etc. that they have heard about in their family tree?

 

Nothing famous that i'm aware of, family history is difficult to trace on my dads side and I believe my uncle traced it on my moms side, don't remember if he found anything interesting or not.

 

Our family came over here on the Mayflower,
and we are/were 5th generation removed to Lady Diane (who died tragically)

 

Hi `Greg,
Another great thread topic...
I'd be proud `if I were you to have a famous grandmother that helped so many in life be `happy I hope you research more. Thanks for sharing history/story

I have a famous grandfather, but I'm not permitted to reveal his identity I think they wrote a book about him & his son

 

there's too much to list, lol. part of my mother's side can be traced back to coming over on the mayflower, as the story goes it was two brothers in their teens, and apparently they accidentaly lit the black powder supplies on fire one night at sea. lucally it was put out, otherwise i guess my family would be responsable for america not being settled!

dad's side is about 95% italian, and there were a good portion of my great-uncles who were involved with the mafia from the 20's up into the late 60's. my great grandfather on that side (grandmother's father) was also a notorios moonshiner during prohibition, supplied most of the speakeasy's in northern NJ and NYC.

and that's just stuff off the top of my head!

 

Not sure how many generations ago it was now but my dads side of the family is what started the pony express

 

I'm related to Louis Cyr. He was a Canadian strongman. Was the strongest who ever live or something like that. I didn't look in to it too much my aunt was looking at the family tree an found it.