Do you have any notorious/famous branches in your family tree?

[VeIouria]

I'll start -

My many times great uncle on my mother's side was Robert Coates, an infamous actor who was well known for being so bad he was good. Lord Byron was a fan and wrote about him in letters to friends and he was a bit of a celeb.

Anyone interesting in your tree?

It was big enough for 59 signatories. 😉

St Oliver Plunkett on my paternal side. Who was found guilty of high treason for promoting Catholicism in the 1600s, and was hung, drawn and quartered. His head is in a church in County Louth.

King Edward III (Danny Dyer must be a distant relative 😂) and Lord Snowdon on my maternal side.

Wow. Thank you.

I was imaging it as a very long piece of parchment with one name per line. But common sense should have told me that no one would have had long enough arms to unfold it stand with out outstretched whilst reading out the names on it. 😂

A relative on my mums side (so my relative too) won the St Andrews golf open in the past.

On my husband’s side Cardinal Richelieu from The Three Musketeers fame.
On my side someone who fought in the 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin.

Descended from both English and French royalty (ancestors came over with William the Conqueror) so probably related to most of the nobility. The other side of my family were Communists.

Just criminals / east end gangsters. Weird really as I’m quite posh 😂

I traced family back to the Border Reivers. They were fairly infamous.

I have a cousin who’s a pro rugby player for quite a well known U.K. club.
My ExH has a close relative (note sure which) who worked in the original team at Bletchley Park during WW2. We went with him to the reunion one year, and it was so lovely! But also really sad because they all kept pointing out that there’s not many of them left, and there seems to be less every year 😔

DH's ancestors were similar. Their story was no less fascinating for it though but terribly sad. They were displaced by the Highland clearances and went to Edinburgh where they ended up living in the arches of the South Bridge. Me and DH visited the exact arches they lived in on our first visit to Edinburgh. His (iirc) 5xgt grandmother was, according to the census, a single mother to a son, who was a bootmaker. While we were in the 'vaults' (and a more desperate, dark and soul destroying place you couldn't imagine), we were shown one of the workshops there - a bootmakers. And in the museum room upstairs there were parts of boots they found there when they excavated it.

It was very moving and affecting.

I live in Reiver country and find them endlessly fascinating!

Bonkers to think that those are the actual signatures of the ancestors of people on this thread!

I found ancestors originated from Falstone in Reiver country

There were 59 men who signed the death order, let's assume that at the time of signing they already had an average of two children each. It's been 373 years since then, so assuming that every descendant had, on average, two children by the age of 35 and those children did the same etc then there have been approximately 10 generations since which gives currently approximately a quarter of a million descendants up to the age of 35 (who may have children but I haven't counted them) and a further 120k over the age of 35 but under 70 and probably quite a few over 70 but still living. So it's not surprising that there are a few of us on Mumsnet.

My dh’s great great uncle was Micheal collins

My paternal grandmother was a semi-famous 1950s romantic fiction author.
My g-g-g grandmother was a famous author and illustrator.

We are related to the Mitfords.

@Clarinet1 DH also has an ancestor who signed Charles I death warrant, his family are avid Royalists which I find rather amusing @BlackAmericanoNoSugar DH is one of the many thousands.

My Mothers cousin was in the 1966 England World Cup squad.

Not famous but my great great Grandfather jumped ship in New York and stayed for about a decade, returned home after that time and picked up back with his his poor wife as if nothing happened. What a complete git.

I should point out that when you calculate the number of descendants eventually the number grows more slowly, that's because descendants marry other descendants so that two descendants produce two more descendants, the number stops doubling and stays stable. So my number is just a guess, but it's likely that the descendants of these particular people are quite spread out because the families were generally wealthy and could travel so there probably haven't been all that many inter marriages so far.

I think it’s quite high, William the conqueror is also a direct ancestor of mine. And I can go further back than him, to some of the Viking kings, etc.

Most of my ancestors were poor working class people. Lots of agricultural labourers and itinerant workers. However, my mum has done some research and we are, in fact, related to William Winstanley who saved Christmas. Well, he managed to stop Oliver Cromwell from cancelling it anyway.

I have a g g grandfather who committed a crime ( not murder ) and was given 7 years hard labour in Australia .
he never came back to the UK inspite of having a wife and a large family . But ancestry shows I have distant cousins there . Naughty g g grandfather !

I'm very distantly related to Queen Elizabeth I.