Mike Huckabee is Related to Spies and a Traitor

Kristine and I have been big fans of AMC’s TURN since the first episode, and our interest in some of its characters reaches back to George Washington’s Lower Part.

When Kristine was looking last night for information about the April 25th start of TURN’s final season, she came upon a video where Mike Huckabee was explaining the value of TURN for Americans, especially young Americans.

So I queried the Family Forest® this morning to look for Mike Huckabee’s Family Forest® cousins. As I expected to find, Mike Huckabee shares ancestors in the Family Forest® with most of the key characters in TURN. Here they are, arranged from most distant to closest.

Benjamin Tallmadge                17c7r

Robert Townsend                     17c4r

George Washington                 16c4r

Benedict Arnold                       14c7r

Abraham Woodhall                 13c7r

Caleb Brewster                        13c7r

Anna (Smith) Strong              13c3r

Selah Strong                              4c7r

For some of the Family Forest® cousins relationships between a number of the key characters just click on the chart at Family Forest® Family Ties of AMC’s TURN

If you haven’t been watching this great show, you should catch up on the previous seasons before the TURN final season begins on April 25th. It will be time well spent.

If you’d like to see how your family might relate through family ties to TURN and America’s first spy ring, check out our Family Forest® connection service.

#FamilyForestCousins

#TurnAMC

Family Forest® Project

Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc.

Family Forest® is a product and registered trademark of Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc.

Fast Forward to Tombstone Arizona

Once upon a time, there was a Knight. He was of Claverham Manor in Arlington, Sussex, England.

Many of Sir Thomas Fiennes ancestors were also Knights. A number of his ancestors in the first ten generations were also Lords and Earls, and one was a famous king who was one the key historical figures in Braveheart. A Family Forest®  Ancestors-at-a-glance™ is available via this link.

Sir Thomas married Anne Urswick in about 1482 and is said to have had three sons and four daughters by her. All four of their daughters married.

According to the ancestral history digitally indexed and mapped out in the Family Forest®, their daughter Margaret is an ancestor of some of the most famous lawmen of the American West, the Earp brothers.

This means that five centuries after Sir Thomas and Anne married, their descendants were the key participants in the gunfight at (or near) the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, AZ.

Then, one century later, another one of Sir Thomas and Anne’s descendants, through their daughter Anne, portayed the central figure in the fight in a Hollywood movie. He is the famous Hollywood actor Kurt Russell, and he portrayed his 12c5r (twelth cousin five times removed), Wyatt Earp, in Tombstone.

Wyatt and Kurt have many other famous (or infamous) Family Forest® cousins through their common ancestors Sir Thomas Fiennes and Anne Urswick. Some of them include Janis Joplin and Christopher Lloyd and Anne Hathaway, Susan B. Anthony, Howard Dean, Paul Giamatti, Bing Crosby, General Abner Doubleday, Hon. David Souter, Timothy Geithner, Charlie Dent, Julia Child, Senator John Thune, Edna St. Vincent Milay, Edward Snowden, Sigourney Weaver, Penelope Ann Miller, Tuesday Weld, George Plimpton, John Herbert Adler, Marshall Field V, Anthony Perkins, Senator Lowell Weicker, Jr., Clarence Darrow, Bret Boone, John and Jim Harbaugh, Ed Helms, Dick Clark, Bob Newhart, Archibald Cox, Charles Dana Gibson, William DeWolf Hopper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Jodie Foster, the Wilson brother of the Beach Boys, Secretary John Kerry, Caresse Crosby, Loudon Wainwright III, Amy Grant, Sarah Palin, Liv Tyler, Governor Mark Dayton, Richard Gere, James Spader, Horatio Gates Spafford, Lloyd, Beau, and Jeff Bridges Fred Gwynne, Secretary Arne Duncan, Vincent Price, and Larry Hagman.

How successful do you think Sir Thomas and Anne could have been in imagining what some of their descendants would be doing in five or six centuries?

How much more successful can you be in imagining what some of your descendants will be doing five or six centuries from now?

Sir Thomas Fiennes 379 page outline plus 180 page index is available here for only $9.99.

P.S. We claim, and as this blog should clearly demonstrate, that the Family Forest® is the best digital central source for connecting more people through family ties to Tombstone, AZ than any other resource. The same claim can be made for countless thousands of cities and towns across America and Europe.

Family Forest® Project

Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc.

Family Forest® is a product and registered trademark of Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc.

http://www.familyforest.com

Your Ancestral Heritage in a Landfill

Now into my third decade growing the Family Forest® connection service, I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve heard variations on the very same story. It goes like this.

My ________ (parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc.) had been researching and assembling our family history for decades. After she/he passed and the house was being prepared for estate liquidation, my ________ (sibling, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc.) threw it out with all of the other stuff they thought was just worthless accumulations.

I recently spoke with an elderly gentleman who knew this story, and he was trying to prevent it from happening to his descendants, both living and unborn. He already knew that his children and grandchildren had little or no interest in his/their family history, yet.

And Sam had great stories to pass along. At least two of his ancestors were well-documented to have performed valuable services in the founding of our country, and to have personally known George Washington.

So he joined the SAR. Joining a hereditary society is a great first step in passing along a part of your ancestral history to future generations of your descendants.

The reason that I say a part of your ancestral history is because each hereditary society has a particular interest area that they excel at. This valuable focus prevents them from including all of the parts of your ancestral heritage that are outside of their interest area, no matter how interesting those parts are to you and your descendants.

You can join multiple hereditary societies, and pass along multiple parts of your ancestral heritage, in separated parts.

But what if you want to pass along the bigger picture of your assembled and connected ancestral heritage?

You can use the Family Forest® connection service.

Six Miles to Shore

Family Forest Connection Service

I can’t stop thinking about a Family Forest® connection service I recently completed for a young lady from California. It was memorable to me for several reasons, including starting with so little, and accomplishing so much.

The most inspirational part for me is thinking about the spirit of one of Marsia’s ancestors, one of her 7^th-great-grandfathers, with the unusual surname of Brothwell. Joseph was a soldier from Yorkshire, England. I found a story about him on page 1,350 of A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport Connecticut, by Rev. Samuel Orcutt, published in 1886.

More than two centuries ago, Joseph jumped ship in the West Indies, and swam six miles to shore! Then he somehow came to New York, then moved on to Black Rock, in Fairfield, CT, and made his home there at what is now called Stratfield.

Forty-some years later, I still remember sailing due west into the Gulf of Mexico from Longboat Key, FL in a 15′ Venture Cat. It sat very close to waterlevel. At probably about a mile out, I looked back and the shoreline had almost disappeared. It was scary.

What would it have been like if I had continued sailing toward Texas for about five more miles, then jumped off, and tried swimming back to shore? And done it more than two centuries ago, when there were more and bigger creatures in the sea?

What did life look like through Joseph Brothwell’s eyes? What was he thinking while he was very vulnerable in the midst of the perils of the sea, with miles still left to swim?

How inspirational might it be to a college-bound young lady to discover that she carries the genes of this spirited and determined adventurer?

How many motivational stories about your own ancestors are squirreled-away in the nooks and crannies of recorded history, waiting to be discovered?

Maybe the beginning of a new year is the perfect time for you to consider giving us the opportunity to utilize the Family Forest® to lead your family to one or more of those stories.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me ……

You are correct about Janis Joplin, but not about a Mercedes-Benz.

This time it’s about Janis’ classic 1965 Porsche 356c Cabriolet, with a jaw-dropping custom paint job, and it will be auctioned by Sotheby’s on December 10th, 2015 in New York.

Most things I notice, I tend to think of from a family ties perspective. Janis has been in the Family Forest® for awhile, and she has tons of Family Forest® cousins, so I searched for some of her single-digit Family Forest® cousins who might be interested in outbidding their other cousins to own their rock-icon cousin’s Porsche.

Janis’ closest Family Forest® cousin I found so far (6C1R) is Christopher Lloyd. He looked right at home in his DeLorean in the Back to the Future movies, and he should acquire his famous cousin’s Porsche while it’s available.

Next closest is Anne Hathaway (8C). Get Smart’s Agent 99 would be perfect for Janis’ classic 1967 Porsche.

Warren Buffet, one of Janis’ 8C2R, would certainly be noticed in Omaha when he arrives at the next Berkshire-Hathaway meeting in Janis’ Porsche.

Kate Bosworth, another one of Janis’ 8C2R, would probably be even more at home behind the wheel of Janis’ Porsche than she was on a surfboard in Blue Crush.

Some of Janis’ Family Forest® ninth cousins may want to seize this once in a lifetime opportunity before it disappears.

They include Easy Rider Peter Fonda, 2016 Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, US Secretary of State John Kerry, Hollywood actress Kyra Sedgwick, and singer Amy Grant.

The Second Question of Genealogy

You can easily spend years of time, and lots of money, searching for answers to the first question of genealogy: “Who are my ancestors?”

What you will end up with, hopefully, is a number of generation-by-generation pathways leading from you to some of your ancestors, from several centuries ago, and back again.

What you almost never end up with is a number of generation-by-generation pathways leading from you to some of your ancestors, and then coming back different pathways to some of your famous cousins!

This is a much bigger project than the first, and it gives you, hopefully, exciting answers to the second question of genealogy. “Who do I share ancestors with?” You and your family will almost certainly be pleasantly surprised.

Fortunately, much of this second and much bigger project has already been done for you by the Family Forest® Project. All that’s left is to let us network you and your family into this amazingly interconnected web of family ties.

That’s what our new connection service does.

As we enter our third decade of strategic ancestral history R&D, based on the best of the best of what we have discovered in recorded history, we are extremely well positioned to provide you and your family with enriching discoveries that could easily take you years of your time and thousands of dollars to discover on your own.

Whether you have already been searching for years, or are just realizing that you would you would like to know how connected you are, please look at what our new connection service can do for you.

Closest Celebrity Cousins

As I am prone to do while we are Networking Family History with Hollywood™, I often watch Turner Classic Movies and programs in search of interesting characters to lineage link into the vast network of family ties that is the Family Forest®.

Earlier this year TCM arranged with Disney to present some classic Disney content on TCM. The one that triggered fun memories that I hadn’t accessed in decades was Davy Crockett.

As a young boy in the 1950s, one of the biggest fads I remember was coonskin caps. No matter where you lived in America, if you didn’t have one, you certainly knew a number of boys who did.

The TCM introduction taught me something I didn’t know. Davy Crockett was the first (and only?) produced-for-television series that was repurposed into a hit theatrical movie.

Against staff recommendations that it be shot in less expensive black and white, since that was how the television audience would see it, visionary Walt Disney insisted that they shot it in color. After the huge popularity of the show, it was re-edited into a movie called “Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier”, and what people had already seen for free at home, they then paid to see at theaters.

So I made a note to look for the ancestors of the lead actor, Fess Parker, to see if I could network him into the Family Forest® (since before the end of the last century, the prime directive has been that no one gets into the Family Forest® unless they are related by birth, marriage, or adoption to someone who is already in).

Even though I do this all the time, there is no way I can guess in advance who someone’s closest celebrity cousins will be. In Fess Parker’s case, I was more surprised than usual.

So far in the Family Forest®, Fess Parker’s two closest celebrity cousins are a former Disney Mouseketeer and a President of the United States, Britney Spears (sixth cousin twice removed, 6C2R) and President Obama (7C2R).

So how surprised might you and your family be to discover your closest celebrity cousins?

Now, after twenty years of strategic research and preparation, the Family Forest® can probably show you your closest celebrity cousins through our new connection service.

By the way, in the current issue (November/December 2015) of Cowboys & Indians – The Premier Magazine of the West, Fess Parker is said to be the catalyst for Kurt Russell’s GoGi Wines.

I wonder if Kurt Russell owned a coonskin cap when he was a boy?

History Pivots on Small Events

As I am searching daily through the vast collection of fascinating nooks and crannies of recorded history waiting to be explored (and leaving a well-marked digital trail to the discoveries found there), I often pause to reflect on this thought-proving truth.

What if this or that seemingly insignificant deed, action, accident, mistake, introduction, meeting, serendipitous discovery or observation, suggestion, encouragement, timely smile, act of kindness, etc. had never happened? What if ……?

Recently I was reminded of this truth in my own life, when this photograph arrived in my email.

There is famous Hollywood actor John Travolta. How many hours over the years have we enjoyed watching and re-watching his movies? How many people around the globe instantly recognize him?

Then there is famous NASA space pioneer and American hero Buzz Aldrin, an inspiration to so many people over the decades, and now an active advocate for America’s future greatness.

Then there is my dear old friend Tom Nocera, the youngest member of the launch crew for Apollo 11, celebrating the 46th anniversary of the historic event with our cousin Buzz and John Travolta.

While he was there, he informed Buzz Aldrin that Buzz is a single-digit cousin of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride. Tom presented him with a Family Forest® relationship chart laying out the exact connection.

Just a couple of weeks earlier Tom gave Mrs. David Crosby a Family Forest® relationship chart. It showed David’s generation-by-generation family ties to one of David’s favorite authors, Mark Twain.

Even though it was a very small event over four decades ago, it’s still a vivid memory. My fiancee and I were on a pier on Clearwater Beach on a picture postcard perfect Florida evening, taking pictures with her Dad’s camera.

I accidently dropped the lens cap, and watched helplessly as it rolled seemingly in slow motion to the edge of the pier, then fell silently for about six feet before it went kerplunk! (lens caps were metal in those days) into Clearwater Bay.

Tom Nocera, the owner of the camera store where we bought a replacement lens cap the next day, became a great and lifelong friend.

If that one tiny event had not happened, if I had not accidentally dropped that lens cap 44 years ago, this photograph would not have arrived in my email box. But impossible to imagine, the whole timeline in between would have been altered in incalculable ways, including probably, me meeting Kristine.

Almost equally as important to Kristine and me today, Tom would not have become the leading champion of our Family Forest® Project, and one of its most enthusiastic supporters.

Thank you Tom for being there in Clearwater that day, for your encouragement and assistance to keep us Networking Family History with Hollywood™, and for introducing the Family Forest® to so many of the millions of people who are destined to be delighted and enriched by it!

Ancestral Gold

If you were Prince William or Prince Harry, of course you would have grown up expecting to see the faces of your ancestors on coins. After all, their paternal grandmother’s face appears on more coins than any person in history, a record which will certainly never be broken.

But for me, as I guess it is for you, the expectation of ever seeing a coin with the face of one of my ancestors seemed as ridiculously absurd as the possibility of me visiting Saturn.

Then all of a sudden, there he was! And he’s on a magnificent coin, a Roman Caesar (junior emperor) being a savior of London.

It happened in a used bookstore in Downtown Hilo. I was skimming through The History and Conquests of Ancient Rome by Nigel Rogers when I was halted by the 1,700 year old coin.

I read about the conquering hero depicted on the coin, and discovered that he was the father of someone who, according to the ancestral history mapped out in the Family Forest®, I have many different ancestral pathways to.

In fact, almost a decade ago I had written about discovering that I could see his son in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I also created what I believe is an amazing Family Forest® eBook about his son’s generation-by-generation descendants for 40 generations.

So of course I bought the book. How can anyone not own the book containing photographs of the first coin one discovers depicting his or her ancestor?

Constantius Chlorus is an ancestor of probably more than a billion people living today. If you are reading this in English (or French, or German, or Spanish, or Russian, etc.), he is almost certainly one of yours. I hope you enjoy the discovery, cousin.

Family Forest® Family Ties of AMC’s TURN

I am very excitedly looking forward to the return of AMC’s TURN, and almost two decades of strategically growing the Forest Family® has been fueling my excitement.

One of the central characters is someone I wrote about more than a decade ago in a Captain’s Log (a blog before there were blogs).

Attached is a chart showing actual blood relationships (not just some kind of Kevin Bacon type six degrees of separation social connections) between a number of the TURN characters, plus a couple of living people, according to ancestral history already assembled in the Forest Family®.

Warning: it could be paradigm-shifting to think about what you are seeing on this chart. Every person there shares ancestors, according to fully-sourced recorded history, with every other person there.

There are 100 boxes filled in on this chart, and all of these calculations took just 39 minutes and 30 seconds to calculate from the Forest Family® National Treasure II preview.

With just a few minutes more, I could use the Forest Family® National Treasure II preview to calculate similar relationships from all ten of these people to politicians like President Obama or John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, media personalities like Mike Huckabee or Anderson Cooper or Garrison Keillor, business moguls like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, Hollywood icons like Errol Flynn or Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart, current Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks or Amy Adams or Matt Damon, etc., etc.

Enjoy the return of the TURN series, and please stay tuned for an upcoming Forest Family® blog about the secrecy genes from America’s first spy ring arriving in Jekyll Island in 1910.

Just click on the Forest Family® TURN chart below to enlarge. Enjoy.