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.

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

I see it every time I visit PDX for the Monthly Family Trip. My aunt Yvette (my mother's brother's widow) has it in her farmhouse. It's been painted with scenes from the trip, and is standing on-end and being used as a cupboard - but it's still there.

ETA: We also have several of the artifacts used in the crossing; a hand-carved oak rolling pin and a hatchet are the two I remember, and my mom has them. Various pieces of furniture are in various small-town museums all over southwest Portland.

ETA again: oh, and the son of the leader of the wagon train was James Knox Polk Gribble. Named after a president, and saddled with our unfortunate maternal-grandmother's-great-grandmother's name. My mom's mom's maiden name was Baldwin. And she played piano, as did her mom.

My family isn't famous, but we were pioneers - the small Oregon towns of Hubbard, Mount Angel, and Aurora were filled with relatives; German-speakers from Pennsylvania who trekked to the Territory and founded small farming communities. The sad thing is they didn't like children much, so the whole bunch of us has dwindled to myself - faggot, no kids - and my sister - who doesn't like children, either.

END OF LINE

I don't think there is any royalty or anyone famous in my family history. My Italian side were farmers in Italy, and the Irish side doesn't talk about family history.

I just got a call from my dad. My mom's in the hospital. They're not quite sure what the problem is -- allergic reaction to something made her blood pressure drop really low, but they're not sure what she's allergic to. I talked to her, and she seems OK, but they're keeping her in the hospital another night.