Several Notables Connected

Question

So I started off looking to add another Academy Award winner to the tree, and chose Melissa Leo as one of the more recent actresses to win an Oscar who did not have a profile on WikiTree. Little did I know that this was to lead to a much larger project...

So Melissa had a child, but did not marry John Heard (father on Home Alone movies), who is also a Notable. But John was married 3 times and one of those time to Margot Kidder (also a Notable).

So Margot was married (yes, you guessed it) 3 times, and each time to a NOTABLE. Off we go again. Her first husband, Thomas McGuane, was married (yep) 3 TIMES. Once to a descendant of DAVY CROCKETT, once to Margot Kidder, and once to the sister of JIMMY BUFFETT. I still have to explore those routes.

So returning to Margot - picking her since I have an interest in superhero movies, I started to trace her lineage. Did you know the Kidder family has a tree that has been traced to the 1300's? I sure didn't, but once I found out, thought I'd see how far back I had to go to find an existing profile - guess what? The 1600's! And once I made the connection to old Enoch Kidder - HE WASN'T CONNECTED TO THE GLOBAL TREE!!! - Dang it.

So, I went back and added wives... and came across a common name, SPRAGUE. Again, picking it as good as any other, I started up the line again. And sure enough, there was ANOTHER match to an existing profile - but this time it WAS connected to the global tree. So I've added at least 5 Notables, another maybe 15 new profiles, AND connected a very old lineage of the Kidder's to the global family tree. Not a bad couple of days' work.

Note that I'm not bragging here, but I wanted to share and just thought this would be a fascinating story to tell of how easily one tiny thing can lead to a whole series of breakthroughs that end up connecting way more than you might have thought. Note: The links will update tonight so we'll see how far away from AJ that Margot is tomorrow.

Comments

Thank you, Scott!

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And today she is now 27 degrees from AJ!

Still checking into the Davy Crockett and Jimmy Buffett connections. Davy is in the system, but not a lot of descendants have profiles for him. May take a bit of investigation to find that connection. Jimmy does not have a current profile, so again, some research required to get that in place, but at least I have a starting place now.

Answer 1

Great work, Scott, and thank you for sharing the process. I kind of love the "one thing leads to another" route :-)

Answer 2

Great job, Scott!  I too have seen the power of following one small lead after another.  It's always amazing to me when it results in finding new information.

Answer 3

I'd like to think some of my work helped you there.  Sprague is a line that I've worked on.

Comments

I'm sure it was - so Thanks, Kyle! It makes a big difference when we can build on each other's work like that. It's one of my favorite things about WikiTree!