Issue 32 & 33.14
Brigham Young University (BYU) has a cool new tool on their website called Relative Finder. You can allow Relative Finder access to your Family Tree on FamilySearch.org and it will then tell you which famous people you are related to. They have added different categories of famous people so you can select whichever groups you are interested in. This is really fun! I have people ask me all the time if I have found that I am related to famous people and now I can recite a lot.
You go to http://roots-fb.cs.byu.edu/ to get to Relative Finder. It says, “Discover how you relate to the world. Relative Finder is a place where you can see how you’re related to the world. Discover connections between you, presidents, prophets, and your friends! As always, we are making family history fun and accessible for the young and old.” Click Connect to give access to your information on FamilySearch Family Tree, so first you need to have your information there so it can compare.
You can create groups or use their built in groups. I knew I was a third cousin of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland so I chose Current Apostles to see if it was accurate. Then I clicked Show Relatives and found that not only is Elder Holland listed there as 3rd cousin once removed, but there are eight other apostles that I am related to as well. It gives me the relationship and the path, like to get to M Russell Ballard; we link back to Alexander Grant and Elspeth Lamb. It even draws up a print format and you can download a PDF version of it.
There are categories besides LDS; I also ran a connection to Declaration Signers, Famous Americans, Mayflower, and Science Technology. Apparently Philo T. Farnsworth and the Wright brothers are my cousins. I came up with relations to 16 US Presidents, with Harry S. Truman as the closest relative. This is all based on the data in Family Tree, so if it is not accurate, then neither are the results. So if you find a cool connection, you may want to review it and see if you can source it and verify the relationships. Thomas Jefferson’s line really needs some work!
For more information, contact Shanna S. Jones shannasjones@msn.com (435)628-4900.