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.

The most famous member of our family is a cousin who is a member of the British Parliament. She was the first Black member of Parliament, and female to boot, so it made quite a ruckus. Go Diane.

Enough of a ruckus that spam is being sent out in her name, which is never good.

My Dad made the Who's Who in Jamaica, but that was more something to be teased about than anything else. My only claim to fame is being mentioned in his entry.

And I have a cousin who's #245 in the world in the women's tennis tour. Which is way further than I'd have put her, because she's so damned tiny. Go Megan.

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

So seriously adorable.

I'm fairly certain we are not descendants of any royalty of any sort.

There's a family legend that we're very distantly related to the Hohenzollern emperors of Germany. Which makes a nice family legend but has no evidence to back it up.

I'm probably the best-known person I'm related to. Which gives you an idea how un-famous we are.

Family legend has my great-great-grandfather being a tailor to Maria Theresa. The timing is right and he was Czech, but I suspect the correct phrasing is either "a tailor in the court of Maria Theresa" or, more probably, "a tailor in the time of Maria Theresa." There's also a rumor about a French princess running off with a coachman. Yeah, right.

My only documented claims to fame are ancestors in Massachusetts by the 1640s; Revolutionary and War of 1812 soldiers; and the fact that my grandmother grew up with Eisenhower and is in his high school graduation photo. Her extremely flamboyant father bought cattle at the railhead in Abilene; wore white buckskins and rode white horses; and was supposedly a friend of Wild Bill Hickok.

Otherwise, I come from a long line of peasants.

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

I happen to love the stories about the women in our paternal line beating those men with a mop handle who tried to get away with not paying her!

Iris looks like she's already figured school out. Whee!

On the Humes side of my family we had generals on both sides of the Civil War in Tennessee. The one on the Confederate side was the youngest general in the Confederate army at the time. That's about it for famous relatives.

There's also the story about my great-great uncle Irving doing an appendectomy in a bar with a swiss army knife, but that one may actually be true.

My mom's family's claim to fame is my great-great-great (about 8 generations back, I think) uncle, Adam Helmer. If you were forced to read Drums Along the Mohawk in school, you may remember him as one of the militia scouts who stumbled onto a British-allied Native American war party. Having escaped from immediate slaughter, he and a couple other fellows ran long and hard to warn colonists in the area to head to safety at Fort Herkimer. Family legend has it that he stopped at the homestead of his sister and her husband for a bit of kip and a new pair of moccasins before continuing his race.

My grandfather used to say that the reason Adam outran the Indians was that he was running on dry ground, and they weren't. I don't think that qualifies as legend, though.

sure, Mom's Dad's family came across the plains in a wagon in 1846 (and we still have the wagonbed),

DUDE! Who has it? Have you seen it? That is SO cool.

Lessee... on Mom's Mom's side we're related to the Browns (as in John, as in Harper's Ferry). On Dad's side we're somehow related to Gore Vidal. I don't know if bad-tempered zealotry and snarky liberalism are genetically transferable traits, but it wouldn't shock me if they were.

There's a monument somewhere in New Jersey for one of my ancestors who was a general in the Revolutionary War. (The British killed him and then put up a monumnent. True fax. I gather that unlike peons, killing generals was Not Done.) The same guy was also the private physician to Bonnie Prince Charlie at some point in his youth.

My great grandfather also had some sort of connection to Jesse James, and was named after him, but I disremember the details. That's about it for my family.