Political Trivia: Mitt Romney related to "Billy The Kid."

[wyldwolf]

Some genealogists say he (Billy The Kid) was born William Henry Bonney and was son of William Harrison Bonney and wife Katherine Boujean, paternal grandson of Levi Bonney and wife Rhoda Pratt and great-grandson of Obadiah Pratt (Saybrook, Connecticut, September 14, 1742 – Canaan, New York, March 2, 1797) and wife Jemima Tolls (New Haven, Connecticut, August 11, 1754 – Washington, New York, November 24, 1812) (who in turn were the great-great-great-great-grandparents of Mitt Romney).

Wikipedia reference to: http://www.wargs.com/political/romney.html

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Not a descendant then, unless Billy

was shooting off more than his gun out there in the sands of New Mexico.

[wyldwolf]

2. heh! Right. Related to, then.

[Xipe Totec]

3. Mitt is related to Ken, Barbie's boyfriend nt

[LiberalFighter]

7. Don't forget related to Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam, Mengeli, Blair, Bush

[kestrel91316]

4. According to the ancestry.com website, I am a direct descendant of

Geoffrey Chaucer, the guy who wrote Canterbury Tales. It's interesting in light of my interest in writing, and my niece getting accepted at U of Iowa's graduate writer's program..........

Genealogy is fun. I would have far less interest in history, particularly US colonial/revolutionary period, if I didn't have so darned many ancestors involved in obscure events of the time.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. I agree

I found out an awful lot about the Salem witch trials after I found one ancestor who was foreman of the jury in the Rebecca Nurse trial, and another ancestor who was tried and condemned as a witch (not Rebecca Nurse, though--that would have been toooooo weird!)

[Donnachaidh]

6. uhh, take ANYTHING on Ancestry with a massive grain of salt

There's lots of unadulterated BS posted there, from genealogists who were less than thorough. :shrug:

[kestrel91316]

8. I never claimed it was properly documented. Everybody there knows

there's the stuff you know because you've properly researched and documented it, and then there's the other stuff - which could prove to be completely wrong.

I haven't had a close look at what documentation of that hypothetical line there is. With my New England roots there is LOTS, because everybody went to church and all the churches kept detailed BMD records.

[Donnachaidh]

9. Sorry if it seemed like I said you were claiming anything

I was involved with alot of the pre-Ancestry information gathering and quite a lot of it was questionable. And there were genealogists in the past that would make up family history for a price - usually linking families to old-world royals. And this bogus information was being loaded at Ancestry.

Ancestry isn't the only place on the web to verify family roots. Rootsweb.com is one of the best to start at. I tell my gen clients that they should look at Ancestry, but then start doing the work on their own.

[kestrel91316]

11. Because my dad's family was LDS, I have found Ancestry AND

Rootsweb invaluable in tracking down various and sundry cousins, uncles, aunts, in the 20th century. Then I go to the census online at Ancestry and actually FIND them. That census is GREAT, but the indexing is a bit problematic for some years. The online SS death index is priceless, too.

My goal is merely to track back all my lines to original immigrant ancestors. I doubt I will be able to do this in the decades before I die. There are simply too many - most of them came to New England in the 1600s and 1700s. My mom's cousin is the family genealogist (semiprofessional) and I have swiped an awful lot of her work, lol.

[Donnachaidh]

12. It's fun when you get way back

one of our lines goes back to 900AD in Scotland, another to 1500AD in France, etc. I've been doing genealogy for about 30 years, and I have my stuff at Rootsweb.

[Czolgosz]

10. Whatever anyone says about their underwear and multiple marriages, Mormons make thorough genealogies

[Donnachaidh]

13. that is because they plan on posthumously baptizing all their ancestors

It's really not a service to humanity.