Notable connections: e.g. between Barry Gordy Jr. and Lillian (Gordy) Carter

Question

I just learned of a connection between two notable families.  Because members of each family are still living, I have to be careful how I write this post.  Hopefully I keep within privacy regulations.

One way to state the connection is that 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gordy-193

and 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gordy-6

are half-first cousins.  I believe it is clear from the profiles that they are in notable families, so it is not a problem for me to say so here.

I was surprised that you wouldn't know this connection from WikiTree.  It raises what I think are two interesting questions:

Ethical Question: Certain connections may be a matter of such sensitivity that people don't feel right making them as strangers to the families.  Does Wikitree have a policy about keeping certain connections unmade?  The answer is yes: connections to living people.  Or not really, since if the living person has a profile then the connection is there -- you just can't see what's on the other side.  But what about the connection I mention above?  I'd guess there's no policy preventing making it, since a close relative should be able to make such connections if he/she wants, and then it gets hard to define "close relative".

Categorization Question: Is there a procedure to categorize notable connections or otherwise make them stand out?  More generally, there are so many cases of connections that fit into useful categories, e.g., "adoptive parent", "step-parent", "notable connection", or "non-biological heir".    I feel like categories, stickers, and boxes are assigned only to profiles, but we do have something like a connection category called "confirmed with DNA".

I think it would be useful to display certain types of connections with a standard section allowed on a page, say === Connections ===.  One could then list such types of connections on both profiles in the connection in a systematic way. 

For notable connections, we could place [[Category:Notable Connection]] in the profiles at the two "ends" of a notable connection to accumulate such connections in one place.  Probably for this we'd want to limit the number of degrees of separation and limit to only connections between people with the "notable" box.  Maybe some connection categories are so valuable that they could be displayed in a similar way to the "confirmed with DNA" category.

Comments

I think, if you take another look, you will find it is Lillian (Gordy) Carter who is the cousin of Berry Gordy, Jr, not her spouse. Their fathers were half-brothers.

---

Oops, yes, that's why I shouldn't WikiTree when I'm half asleep in the middle of the night!  I fixed the link in my post.  Thanks for the correction.

---

Haha, well, what else are you supposed to do when you can't sleep? And it isn't as if you linked to a completely unrelated profile. That would be the most likely outcome if I were half asleep. 

---

@Deb: “Haha, well, what else are you supposed to do when you can't sleep?“ Oh, soooo true!

Answer 1

Wow I never knew. What an amazing family!

Answer 2

That the senior Gordy was offspring of a white man and an enslaved woman appears to be lacking a solid source.  The link on the Wikipedia entry is broken.  The unlinked profile's bio claims the enslaved woman was Esther Johnson, but if she has a profile, it's not linked to as Gordy's mother, currently blank.  The story is interesting but let's find a solid source to back it up.

Comments

It's unlinked because the closest thing I was able to find with a birthdate was a Geni profile with an estimated birth date of between 1793 and 1853. Also because the system presumes that only married people can produce children. 

I also found a snippet from Movin' Up that says that his father's mother was Esther Johnson, "who was probably a slave". As well that his great-grand father on his mother's side was a Native american.

Answer 3

To add to the confusion, there were 3 Berry Gordy's. Berry Gordy I and James J. Gordy were half-brothers, sons of James Thomas Gordy.  Berry Gordy II (aka Berry Gordy Sr.) and Lillian Gordy were half-first cousins.  Berry Gordy III (aka Berry Gordy Jr., the Motown king) and Jimmy Carter are half-second cousins.

But wait, there is a Berry Gordy IV, the son of Berry GOrdy Jr.....aggghhh why can't people number themselves sequentially?

What's really scary is that Jimmy Carter is related to LMFAO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMFAO

I wanna see Jimmy do the shuffle dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8