Being the singularly focused creature that I am, I'm still tackling the collected dead. I'm up to the T's now which means I'm on the home stretch. (pause for happy dance) and once the various names are migrated, I can jaunt down those rabbit holes for which I salivate. Whilst nosing about the bones yesterday - I made a whoppin' accidental discovery: my dad and my step grandpa have a common ancestor. For me, that means the clan that disowned me and all the other odd Hughes's after my dear Grandma Carol died (the dirt is that Carol's first husband, grandpa Hughes was a monster and she divorced him and married Grandpa Bliss and lived happily everafter....therefore, once gone, the Hughes's got a royal family flush.) are actually blood relations! (nya ha!) Wait till I tell 'em THAT!

The second way cool thing is a "toy" on my research site (onegreatfamily.com) called a relationship calculator. Its basically a list of famous relations and if you hit a happy little button, the squirrels plot your tree for you. Just for grins I've found the following family ties:

Using my firstborn for ease of calculation - but all these come from my side of the family and not the Boehm side:

Fred and Princess Diana Spencer: 10th cousins twice removed. I've actually plotted this one out

Fred and Ralph Waldo Emerson: 13th cousins twice removed. Haven't proven this

Fred and Stephen King: 13th cousins (that explains a lot)Have not proven this.

Fred and Walt Disney: 16th cousins (this also explains a lot, unfortunately Fred HATES Disney go figure. Have not proven this

and last but not least and definitely not expected

Fred and Muhammed Ali: 16th cousins (no kidding?) Have not proven this

Supposedly we share DNA with Michelle Obama, Rosa Parks, Attila the Hun (Have traced this back, possibly true) several statesmen and presidents, Charlemagne (also possibly true for more than one family line) and a bunch of other weirdos. The problem with the squirrels is that they go forward from a common ancestor quite nicely but they don't run backwards. I spent hours last night trying to find Shakespeare in the lineage and I don't even LIKE Shakespeare. I do have the lineage for Chaucer printed out but haven't proven it yet)

Supposedly we are related to Jessie James - which also means there's a connection somewhere to Ozzy Osborne (snort) but I'm not even going to look for that. I do however have an Osborne bloodline going back to the 1400's in Cornwall England. (did that one all by myself, thank you very much) My brick walls happen with my Prussian ancestors though. It seems that there is a black hole around the mid 1800's and anyone coming to the US from Prussia - must have spontaneously spawned with no parental information. That effectively shuts down the Boehms and Pfundts for my hubby's lineage, and one side on my mom's lineage. But still. In only 8 months - I have all this junk...in my family trunk.

Then there's that whole theory by David Icke that the House of Windsor and several of the presidential families are Martian Lizards.....I'm telling you....dragon DNA baby.

All joking aside, what humbles me are the connections to writers. Since I, my aunt, my grandpa and one of my children are all storytellers and poets...well. It gives me a warm fuzzy....Doesn't mean any thing to the outside world....but in my sappy heart, it makes me feel part of something bigger than my desk job. And it will be fun to put this on the website for my relatives. Thats the main thing.

Peace.