What are some examples of famous people who are related (4th cousins or closer)?

Question

I know we have the one world family tree (which I'm yet not connected to despite having several hundreds ancestors) with Kevin Bacon and the US Presidents (I think). I'm looking for some examples of those famous people that we're closely related (less than 4th cousins).

Don't mention siblings like the Bridges brothers or father/son like the Sutherlands.

 

Thanks in advance for your answers, looking forward to them!

Comments

Thank you all so much for your great answer. Enjoying reading everyone of them. I will use one of those examples for my soon to be launched website as an onboarding explanation of triangulation. I think a real life example is better to use than talking about beans (Mendel).

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Peas not beans.

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Actors Adam Driver and Patrick Swayze are sixth cousins, twice removed: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Relationship&action=calculate&person1_name=Driver-1312&person2_name=Swayze-66

Answer 1

This one is probably more obvious, but since I'm descended from an Adams line, it comes up a lot:

Johns Adams (Adams-10), 2nd President of the United States, and Samuel Adams (Adams-42), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, are second cousins.

Answer 2

Don't forget Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D Roosevelt.  I think Franklin was a nephew of Teddy.  (maybe with a removed, but certainly closer than 4th cousin.

Comments

Actually, Franklin and Theodore were only 5th cousins. But Eleanor, FDR's wife, was Teddy's niece.

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Should have gone and looked.  Not that Eleanor wasn't a famous person in her own right.

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Those happened to be on the tip of my brain because I tracked back some of the Roosevelt family a few years ago, following the steamboat branch of the family.

Answer 3

Al Roker http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Roker-12 and Lenny Kravitz http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kravitz-24 are 2nd cousins according to http://www.cracked.com/article_20200_8-celebrities-with-unexpected-famous-relatives.html

WikiTree does not (yet) have them as related.

Comments

They actually aren't related closely. Believe me, it took me weeks to unravel that mess.

The confusion happened because Lenny had a grandfather Albert Roker and Al Roker had a grandfather Albert Roker that were born around the same time in the Bahamas and lived in the same place.

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Thank you Jamie!  Sincerely,

Answer 4

The Kennedy Family, the Bush Family, the Roosevelt Family, the Clinton Family, all ran for president.

Liza Minelli is the daugther of Judy Garland.

Jane Fonda is the daughter of Henry Fonda.

Ricky Nelson is the son of Ozzie Nelson and his wife Harriet.

Patty Duke was married to Arthur Miller if I remember correctly.

Michael Jackson and his famous siblings.

All the kings and queens of Europe are related to each other too.

Actress Grace Kelley married the prince or whatever of Monaco.

Comments

Patty Duke was married 4 times, but John Astin (of The Addams Family) is probably the only one of her husbands you've heard of. Arthur Miller was married 3 times, including to Marilyn Monroe.

 

Duke and Miller were completely separate generations. Miller was my father's age, Duke was a little younger than me.

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Sharon's right about the kings and queens of Europe being related.  First cousin marriages were quite common, uncle/niece marriages as well.  The Church forbade marriage between closely related couples, but a dispensation to allow them to marry was usually fairly easy to arrange.

The last Habsburg King of Spain, Carlos II, was so inbred that he had many physical and intellectual disabilities.  I can remember reading in an article, that he was more inbred, then if his parents had been brother and sister.

Even Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, are I think 4th cousins on one side and 3rd cousins on the other, both being descended from Queen Victoria and Albert the Prince Consort (a first cousin marriage) and also from Christian IX, King of Denmark and his wife Louise.

Answer 5

 

• Eleanor Roosevelt was Theodore Roosevelt's niece
•  William Findlay (4th Governor of PA) was the father-in-law of Francis Shunk (10th Governor of PA)
• George Porter (3rd Governor of Michigan Territory) was the brother of David  Porter (9th Governor of PA)
• John Shulze (6th Governor of PA), was the grandson of Rev. Henry Muhlenberg, who is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States.  John also was the great grandson of John Conrad Weiser, interpreter and diplomat between the Pennsylvania Colony and Native Americans. 
• Gotthilf Muhlenberg, a well-known botonist and first president of Franklin College, was the grandson of John Conrad Weiser

Answer 6

Ian Fleming and Christopher Lee are close cousins, and you can look on the Tree to see how they're connected (through the "Rose" line).

Answer 7

There is a fun website called Famous Kin that shows relationships between famous people.  www.famouskin.com

Comments

I use FamousKin quite a bit. I find  that Rich Hall does a good job and fairly accurate with sources. I have found a few mistakes such as Francis Scott Key's great-great grandmother listed as Mary Boarman when it should be Gardiner's first wife, Susannah Barton.

Answer 8

Well, it's not direct, but Stella Tennant, the supermodel is from the Cavendish family. And, Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt. George Clooney is the nephew of Rosemary Clooney.. Thomas Brodie-Sangster who played 'Sam' in 'Love, Actually' is really Hugh Grant's second cousin once removed.. Those are a few that I know off the top of my head.

Answer 9

Found a cousinship for Marilyn Manson (born Brian Warner) and his frequent artistic collaborator/movie star, Johnny Depp. They're both descended from John Seaman (Seaman-10). Manson's mother and Depp's grandfather are 9th cousins once removed, so you can do the math and figure out what kind of cousins they are exactly.