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!

New Portal Into Genealogical Entertainment

Many thanks to our friend Tom Nocera who has just created a fun resource that we would like to share with you.

It is a visual window into a decade and a half of short stories about surprising genealogical connections from the Family Forest® into probably some of your favorite Hollywood movies.

Just click on www.hotonfire.com and then click on whichever movies catch your attention.

Please follow some of the links within the stories, as they are often illuminating enhancements.

Enjoy!

Family Forest® Videos

It’s quicker and makes so much more sense to see it instead of read about it. There are more than a dozen short videos via the links below. They range from how-to vidoes, to visions of the future. Please enjoy.

Family Forest how-to-videos at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/familyforestproject

Emperor Constantine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgmBzpKsKg8

Briquebec Castle: http://familyforest.com/products/94/descendants-of-baron-anslech-turstain-of-briquebec-ebook

Rome Reborn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kuhTyCl-yA

Family Forest® Snippet Video: http://snippets3.homestead.com/

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

A People-Centered Approach to History® is a registered trademark of Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc.

What do the 85th Academy Awards, PBS’ Downton Abbey, Knights Templar, and Super Bowl XLVII have in common?

MEDIA: TV/Oscar trivia from Hollywords Publicity Group

VANCOUVER January 31, 2013 – Sounds impossible?

That’s exactly what Bruce Harrison, the mastermind behind Family Forest®,  would have thought before he spent tens of thousands of hours questing through the nooks and crannies of recorded history, filtering and distilling the knowledge that was assembled by experts, and digitally-indexing the results into an amazingly interconnected network of ancestral pathways that can now be explored visually.

The attached chart is a small example of the answers the Family Forest® can generate. Here’s what you will find: The first column is 21 people. The second column shows their connection to the Oscars, and the third column shows their role.  The next four columns show the computer-generated relationships of the 21 people in the first column to other people.

The fifth column is Seth MacFarlane, Host of the 85th Academy Awards.  The next column is to the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, the present Lord of Highclere Castle, which is the setting for PBS’ enormously popular series Downton Abbey.

Highclere Castle is also the setting for “Lady Almina And The Real Downton Abbey”, a present-day New York Times best-seller written by the 8th and current Countess of Carnarvon. The 8th Earl of Carnarvon has extensive early Colonial American ancestry, which makes him a single-digit cousin to many millions of Downton Abbey fans. Almost half of the people in the column are his single-digit cousins.

The following column is to the founder of Briquebec Castle.“This one is the most fascinating to me,” says Harrison, “because, according to the recorded history mapped out in the Family Forest®, it is one of my own ancestral homes.”  And not only does Briquebec Castle have Knights Templar history (remember the “Da Vinci Code”?), but it is possible to book a stay at the castle tonight, and it is the focal point of what may be the world’s largest eBook. In addition to Briquebec being an ancestral home to at least 20 of the 21 people in column one, it is also an ancestral home of the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, owner of Highclere Castle, and the Harbaugh brothers.

And speaking of the Harbaugh brothers, the last column is to the two of them who will be making history by dueling in Super Bowl XLVII this coming Sunday, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh.

All of that almost makes history cool, now doesn’t it?

Media Contact: Holly Carinci, CEO HollyWords Publicity Group c: 604-723-7963 e: holly@hollywordspublicity.com w: http://www.hollywordspublicity.com f: http://www.facebook.com/HollywordsPublicityGroup

Katie Couric’s Storytelling Genes

Why is Katie Couric still so popular after all these years?

Could it be because of her storytelling genes?

According to the ancestral history already mapped out in the Family Forest, Katie shares ancestors with America’s most famous storyteller. She is a 6C4R (sixth cousin four times removed) of Mark Twain.

Katie Couric and Mark Twain share Moorman ancestors. Some of their famous cousins through their Moorman connection are Tallulah Bankhead, Laura Linney, Lance Armstrong, and Hilary Duff.

The Family Forest® Project is, along with numerous other edutainment objectives, Networking Family History with Hollywood™, and connecting audiences through actual family ties better than any other digital resource, either online or offline.

Genealogy and the 84th Academy Awards

Will genetics be a factor in bringing home an Oscar this year?

It appears that it may have been at the Golden Globes this year. Michelle Williams won for Best Actress for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe.  Could her award-winning performance have been because they share ancestors?

When I ran a Family Forest kinship report [# 10] for Michelle, I discovered that according to the large web of ancestral history already mapped out in the Family Forest, Michelle and Marilyn are cousins.

According to recorded history, they are ninth cousins once removed through their Peabody/Paybody ancestors, and they both have a number of other entertainment cousins who are also descended from the early Peabody/Paybody family of Massachusetts.

Those cousins include Glenn Close (one of Michelle’s competitors at the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards this year), Kyra Sedgwick, Halle Berry, Racquel Welch, Grace Slick, Mark Wahlberg, David Hyde Pierce, Orson Welles, Robert Lansing, and if you consider the political arena to be entertaining, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman.

Kristine and I will be tuning into ABC on Sunday Febraury 26^th to watch the 84th Academy Awards and see if Michelle wins the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of her cousin, Marilyn Monroe, or if one of her other cousins wins (Michelle is also a distant cousin of Meryl Streep).

From Ancient Rome to the 69th Annual Golden Globes

When you watch this short video, the “flying” chart you will see near the end comes to rest at the Emperor’s Palace in Ancient Rome in 320 A.D.

From that very specific place and time in history, generation-by-generation pathways lead forward to eight of the 69th Annual Golden Globes nominees  who are in the Family Forest® National Treasure.

Those eight nominees are all descended from the founder of Briquebec Castle in France, and their names can be found in the list of descendants. The Baron of Briquebec has four ancestral pathways to the Emperor’s Palace in the Family Forest® National Treasure.

So from an actress or actor in Albert Nobbs, Carnage, Cinema Verite, Enlightened, Iron Lady, Moneyball, 30 Rock, and Too Big To Fail, it is now possible for you to travel through a single web of generation-by-generation family ties from each of those eight movies or TV shows to each of the other seven.

The web of family ties in the Family Forest® connects actual ancestors in each European and U.K. country to Hollywood.

That’s why we say the Family Forest® Project is, along with numerous other edutainment objectives, Networking Family History with Hollywood™.

Enjoy the 69th Annual Golden Globes on NBC on Sunday January 15, 2012.

Natalie Wood’s Pallbearers

The thirtieth anniversary of the death of Hollywood icon Natalie Wood has generated plently of media attention. One story I saw mentioned her pallbearers.

So I checked in the Family Forest® and discovered that in addition to Natalie Wood, the Family Forest® National Treasure has six of the seven of her Pallbearers, according to the list at IMDb.

This should certainly sound like a ho-hum “So what?” claim, until one becomes aware of the primary guideline that has been steering the growth of the Family Forest® since before the end of the last century.

No one gets into the Family Forest® unless they are linked by birth or marriage, or occassionally adoption, to someone who is already in the Family Forest®.

Can you imagine a single interconnected web of family ties that is so extensive that it includes Natalie Wood, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, and Elia Kazan? (As well as all U.S. Presidents, Vice Presidents, and their wives, Pearl Harbor survivors, Titanic passengers, Alamo heros, Boston Tea Party “Indians,” all of the people and celebrities discussed in Family Forest® blogs, plus many others.)

That’s the Family Forest®, and among other edutainment objectives, the Family Forest® Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™.

The Personal Property of John Wayne

Highly desirable items from “a time capsule of classic Hollywood and U.S. history“ are becoming available this Thursday and Friday at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, and online.

This auction caught my attention not only because I’m one of the millions of John Wayne fans, but also because our Family Forest® Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™ and U.S. history.

From my professional perspective, I wondered how many fans and bidders have family ties to John Wayne that they are still unaware of.

So I ran a Family Forest® kinship report for John Wayne to see how far the Family Forest has networked him through generation-by-generation pathways to his fans. You can see a summary of the results in this PDF report, and maybe spot a few of your own ancestors.

Does TV host Ellen Degeneres know that she shares ancestors with John Wayne?

Does radio host Don Imus know that he shares ancestors with John Wayne?

Does fellow cowboy actor Viggo Mortensen know that he shares ancestors with John Wayne?

Would some of John Wayne’s contemporaries, like Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, and Marjorie Merriweather Post, have been surprised to discover that they are distant cousins of this towering Hollywood icon?

Will you be surprised to discover that you share ancestors with Hollywood actors and historical figures?

The Family Forest® National Treasure Edition is the best digital central source to lead you to both classic Hollywood connections, and U.S. history connections.