Month: October 2007

CategoriesFamily Tree

Mr. Goulet, I presume?

Posted on 30 October 2007by Brian Zalewski

Celebrity genealogy connections are a fun thing to unearth. I don’t put this into my research as a priority, but sometimes it’s fun to run across.

It makes sense that the farther you go back in generations, the more people you are “related” to, including celebrities. There are a few sites that list this and even Ancestry.com can now do a bit of searching within your tree for you.

The only celebrity connection that I’ve run across in my genealogy is a slim connection to actor Robert Goulet. He’s something like my 8th cousin-3 times removed. I connect to him through my French-Canadian line on my maternal grandmother’s side.

Have any of you run across a celebrity connections in your genealogy research?

Update: Sad news came right after I wrote this article, but before I published it. It seems that Mr. Goulet passed away today. RIP.

CategoriesGenetic GenealogyPersonalZalewski

Ancestry DNA

Posted on 23 October 2007by Brian Zalewski

As the news mentioned last week, Ancestry has opened it’s DNA area. I’ve been a user on Ancestry for many years and I also have become involved in Genetic Genealogy via the National Geographic study and also Family Tree DNA. So, I was more than happy to test our Ancestry’s system.

It was easy to transfer my data over from FTDNA to Ancestry. Currently, they can only transfer from FTDNA or National Geographic, though I imagine if you have your data handy you can convert it yourself. You just need to bring up your DNA data and type in the values into Ancestry from one of these two companies.

It took a few minutes after I entered it for it to find some matches, though unfortunately there are none before 26 generations out. They show you your matches in a nice graphical format including a map. They also give you an estimate of the number of years, along with generations, that this person and you may have a common ancestor.

If you have an Ancestry.com account and also have received your DNA info, I would recommend trying this out. Any and all data can help everyone!

Link: Ancestry DNA