Lillian Gish to Glenn Close

Inspired by a well-done tribute to early Hollywood legend Lillian Gish on YouTube, I explored a fun web of Kevin Bacon style six-degrees-of-separation connections.  

A Family Forest® kinship report for Lillian Gish reveals mostly everyday people, including probably many who have been enjoying her movies for years without having any idea that they share ancestors with their famous cousin.

 

But among the list of Lillian’s relatives are a number of leaders most people will quickly recognize on the chart. 

 

One of Lillian’s relatives is Glenn Close, and she can be seen starting this week in Damages.

 

Another interesting facet is the relevance of the Common Ancestor column on the chart. Millions of people should be able to quickly recognize one or more of them as their own ancestor.

 

This means that they are not only a cousin of Lillian Gish, but that they are also a cousin of the person Lillian shares that ancestor with.

 

So if you spot one of your own ancestors on the chart you will be connected by family ties to at least two of your famous cousins.

 

I predict that when you discover that you are actually a cousin of Lillian Gish, or Glenn Close, or Richard Gere, or Clint Eastwood, etc., you will also discover that you are magnetically drawn to their movies and/or TV series.

 

 

A Legendary Castle

 An opportunity like this may only come along once in a lifetime.

 

A truly legendary castle, Bran Castle, famous in history as Dracula’s Castle, is being offered for sale.

 

The patterns illustrated in world’s largest maps of human migration show that this sale and the future promotion of the castle is a perfect opportunity for ancestral marketing; marketing targeted to those with family ties.

 

Because it was built slightly more recently than Briquebec Castle there are probably not quite as many living people who can call Dracula’s Castle an ancestral home, but a reasonable estimate is that there are at least tens and probably hundreds of millions of descendants of Bran Castle scattered around the planet.

 

 Maybe Dracula’s Castle is one of your ancestral homes …

A Red Letter Day

Whenever I experience a remarkable day in the Family Forest® similar to the one I just had, I call it a red letter day.

A Family Forest® red letter day is defined as a day when changes of extraordinary and enormous impact happen. These are changes that are vast and far reaching, changes that personally relate to at least tens if not hundreds of millions of living people, and changes that by themselves would justify a new release of the Family Forest®.

There is an ancestress in the Family Forest® New World Edition named Eleanor who was born in about 1405. By reasonable estimates more than 100,000,000 living people can call Eleanor grandmother, preceded by a number of “greats.”

Eleanor is lineage-linked to both parents, but her father is not lineage-linked to his parents. Eleanor’s mother however is extremely lineage-linked. A 40-generation Family Forest® ancestor chart for her fills in over 1.5 million boxes with the names of ancestors who Eleanor would call grandmother or grandfather, preceded by a number of “greats.”

But Eleanor’s father was entered twice in the Family Forest® New World Edition, once as a child of his parents, and once as the husband of Eleanor’s mother. Having just found the recorded history which identifies the two entries as the same person, a simple merge of the previously two individuals produced an enormous gain in the number of identified ancestors of Eleanor’s 100,000,000 or more living descendants.

Eleanor’s father’s 40-generation Family Forest® ancestor chart fills in over 560,000 additional boxes with the names of ancestors who Eleanor (and of course all of her descendants) would call grandmother or grandfather, preceded by a number of “greats.”

This is one more dramatic example of how less can be more, much more.

For me red letter days are always exciting, and still awesome, although they now happen quite frequently.

In the early years of the Family Forest® Project, while building the foundation and framework, they almost never happened. But during the last few years the connections have been happening at a surprising and accelerating rate, and there have been between one and two hundred true red letter days during the more than seven hundred days since the Family Forest® New World Edition was finalized.

  

What is an Ancestral History Cartographer?

 Cartographer: one who produces maps.

When ancient mariners returned from their voyages of discovery, they turned their records and logs over to monastic type individuals (map makers, cartographers) who would turn that data into maps which other mariners would use on subsequent journeys to the same regions.

When those mariners returned, they turned their new records and logs over to same monastic type individuals who would then use the new data to make corrections and improvements to those maps, and then produce new maps that other mariners would use on subsequent journeys to the same regions.

That’s similar to what I have been doing digitally with a vast wealth of professionally recorded history for over a decade.

Over the centuries many have journeyed to ancestral regions and brought back their findings. I am comparing and distilling those findings, digitally connecting the dots of recorded history according to where the experts say they should be connected, and producing new maps of generation-by-generation ancestral pathways that zigzag through thousands of years of recorded history through the lives of actual people.

Most of these maps have never been seen before, and visually following one’s curiosity through the world’s largest maps of human genetic migration can be truly fascinating and enriching.

What is an Ancestral History Tour Guide?

 

By dictionary definition, I am a genealogist. In reality, I am not what one usually expects a genealogist to be. 

 

By analogy, think of true genealogists as master chefs. Highly trained professional experts who start from scratch and create precision works.

 

Think of an ancestral history tour guide as similar to a person who reviews fine dining restaurants for guides such as Fodors, Frommers, or newspapers such as the New York Times, and directs readers to the best of the best to save them time, money, and aggravation.

That’s what I am doing, and have been doing for tens of thousands of hours already, with many hundreds of warehouses of professionally recorded history. I explore through the fine print of a vast wealth of ancestral history details that the experts have discovered and recorded over the centuries, and I leave a well-marked digital trail to the exact locations of just the best of the best.

 

This allows you and other Family Forest® explorers to quickly zoom into the most relevant ancestral history knowledge, the best of the best, without wading through hundreds or thousands of repetitions of information and misinformation (as is often necessary on the Internet).

 

This is the way I wanted to find my ancestry presented when I became curious; distilled to the best of the best of what the experts had already discovered.

 

Actually, isn’t this the way you hope to explore any topic which interests you?

 

Wouldn’t you rather start any research quest by first finding out what a reasonably intelligent person has discovered after filtering though all of the repetitions and misinformation while searching for the best of the best?

 

 

So What, Who Cares?

Everyone would, if they only knew. And we would like to give them this special experience via the
Family Forest® Project.

 

A couple of recent comments suggest that the distant past is irrelevant and there is no good reason for knowing who one’s early ancestors were.

 

These opinions can only be held by someone who has not yet seen any of their own ancestors portrayed in a Hollywood movie or someone who has never stood transfixed in a museum gazing at an ancestor captured on canvas at a pivotal moment in history.

 

Paraphrasing Thomas Aquinas, to him who has not yet experienced it, no explanation is possible. To him who has experienced it, no explanation is necessary.

Try to find these “Ah Ha!” experiences for yourself, and for your family. You and your family will be delighted you did.