Family legend says the Gordon branch of Gram's mother's family was related to one George Gordon, which would mean that family can lay claim to a good poet alongside the one who wrote the Worst Poem in the English Language. And, of course Ava Lovelace.

Family tree/legend notes Hollinshed the Historian in there a ways back, too.

(Family Tree Research had me briefly thinking that I might be distantly related to Rik Mayall, but alas, we merely have a mutual 5th cousin through differing branches of said cousin's tree.)

I have my genealogy somewhere, but I don't think we're related to anyone special in particular. The family name/title/whatever does go back a good 450 years or so, and was bestowed by whichever king or nobleman was in charge in that part of Spain at the time.

::waits for sparky to post on the family legend thread and bites my tongue::

in other news: picspam from a little under five years ago. and first day of school, today. please send more tissues, i'm out.

eta: tags are good when they close.

My maternal grandfather's family is from County Cork, and family legend has it that there were McCarthys in Cork who were royalty...and McCarthys who were horse thieves.

We're pretty sure we ain't royalty.

Family legend has it that we're related to President Polk. I'm unclear on the details.

What a lovely young lady you've got there, Sox!

One of the guys I knew in college - didn't hang around with him a whole lot myself, but he did hang around with some of the same people - we called Tim the Prussian. He was purportedly a Hohenzollern prince, and as oldest son of a youngest son of a youngest son, etc. would have commanded a something about the size of a tree lawn if it weren't for that pesky Treaty of Versailles. He was a bit on the touchy-feely side - if you offered him a handshake, he'd pull you into a hug.

I knew one of the Rhodes for who Rhodesia was named. He was an arrogant prick, and I couldn't be more happy they'd renamed the place Zimbabwe and disinvested the lineage. Damned shame about the Mugabe fuckeries.

Man, he was an asshole. Probably one of the people I liked the least during university.

None of my family have ever been famous for anything; sure, Mom's Dad's family came across the plains in a wagon in 1846 (and we still have the wagonbed), and one of Dad's Dad's ancestors was a body-servant of William the Conqueror's son William Rufus, and saved him (from a lion?) in the Black Forest.

Supposedly.

But meh. There are more Google hits for me pretending to be a vampire in silly clothing than any of my relatives.

family history is that dad's side of the family is descended from Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson (illegitimately) and that mom's grandmother was an "Indian Princess" brought back from somewhere in WVa. Somewhat dubious, since she then functioned as the household maid for several years before mom's grandfather dumped his infertile wife of 40 years in order to marry the newly knocked up "Indian Princess". Mmm hmmm. I am also supposedly a direct descendant of Job through mom and thereby eligible to join a somewhat creepy organization called "Job's Daughters".

My favorite bit of Mexican history is how Germany tried to convince Mexico to enter WWI on the Central Powers side. They promised Mexico they could have the territory they lost to the US back.

Anyway, somehow the message got intercepted, so it became one of the reasons the US entered the war on the Allied side.