Tell me something cool one of your ancestors did

[JustOneLastThing]

Stolen this idea from Twitter, I don't really have anything of my own to share apart from my grandma is pretty bad ass, raising my Mum and Aunty by herself in the 60's, facing a ton of social stigma and hardship. She is a hard act to follow.

I'm related to Charles Dickens! My man had the family line traced back 😁

My g,g,g,g,g.... Grandad was David Livingstone. Can never remember how many greats in there

And my gggggggg uncle was the Stanley who "found" Livingstone!

Went as a passenger on a cargo boat to Panama and the Baltic (different trips).
Then foolishly married my grandfather.

Not me but dh has traced his ancestry and is distantly related to Anne Boleyn. That was a

My 10th great grandfather was a Sami Shaman who was sentenced to death for witchcraft (although they didn't execute him in the end as he died on the way to the execution place) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aikia_Aikianpoika

Kato18 are you from Macclesfield then like me?

There is a place in Gawsworth called Maggoty Wood named after him xx

My paternal grandmother sat next to Einstein at a dinner party. One of her sisters had the most fascinating life. She was a bright young thing, she represented the UK in the Paris Olympic at diving, she was a wing walker, an adagio dancer and was the first woman to fail to swim the channel.

@GloriaMaximus

Mine was helping build Foreland Lighthouse

My grandfather was born in the workhouse.

Burnt down the White House.

Mind you it was a distant relative.

I’m a direct descendant of the first golf Open champion.

Burnt down the White House.

A distant relative but still pretty cool.

I cannot trace my family past my maternal and fraternal grandparents so my ancestors are much closer to me than most.

My mother was a bookkeeper for Woolworth's Department Store in our city back in the early 70's. She found the paper trail that proved the general manager was embezzling money and she got in contact with their CFO in New York City. She had a meeting with them at a restaurant where she showed the executives the proof and they called the police and the FBI. She could have lost her job but she felt honor-bound to show the deception. I thought she was very brave.

My uncle worked on the mechanics for the very first space shuttle for NASA. There is a building at the White Sands Missile Range in Alamogordo, New Mexico that bears his name.

My father was a radio singing star in the 50's in his home country of Mexico. He gave it all up to move to the US. I have a few of his recordings of original music. His cousin stayed in Mexico and has had a 60 year long career spanning 90 albums and 50 movies. I grew up with some of the most esteemed Mexican singers and actors but I didn't think too much of it at the time. My godparents were a famous duo who used to appear on television programs throughout the 70's. I discovered that my father's cousin was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Grammy's a few years ago and that one of my babysitter's was also given that honor and was known as "The Pearl" of Mexican radio. We used to play hide and seek.

A great, g,g,g, ... grandfather of mine, was the last man in the Scottish borders to speak with the fairies. Allegedly. And his son was an author & poet.

Great great aunt was a nun in France and a member of the resistance during nazi occupation - she smuggled people out.

My Dh’s ggg....something was a pirate in the 18th Century. He was hanged .

One of my G grandads(don't know how many) was the first son of a lord. Went to visit a small town which had a river, he met a boat girl and married her.
Dumping his fiance who was the daughter of a Duke.

His sister was a dwarf and was sold to a circus. This circus came to this small town, he recognised her and bought her back.
Unfortunately she stole a lot of money from somewhere and was sent to Australia. We have only found her name on the ships papers,so no idea what happened to the rest of her life.

Also, when my great aunt died among her possessions was a small bronze statue of a woman diving on a wooden base. On the base was a plaque engraved with the words “From the grateful people of Tonga”. No one knows why the people of Tonga were grateful to her, she took the information to her grave.

Apparently two brothers, very long ago, helped Robert the Bruce flee to the Island of Rathlin after he lost the battle at Methven.

My great grandfather, who was an Irish soldier in the British Army in WW2, saved the life of Joshua Cooper, of Markree Castle, Co.Sligo, by shooting the sniper meant to kill Cooper. Cooper repaid him by giving him a cottage in the land around the castle, which my mother was born and lived in when she was little. I finally got to visit it last year and to hear the story of how it came into the family. Was quite something.

I'm distantly related to Anne Boleyns' sister,Mary. She married a William Stafford. Can trace my dad's family line through his mother,back to her.

WW1!

My great uncle was sent to prison because he was a contentious objector during World War Two.

Interior decorator at the court of Hanover and then the court of Windsor.

My grandad was captured and put in a PoW camp in WW2 and escaped, twice.
I have so much.regret that when he used to tell us stories of his time in the war I found it boring and he died before I was old enough to understand how fascinating it actually was