Something interesting about you and/or your family

[Amanda]

I have an ancestor from The First Fleet. He was a sailor on the flag ship, the Sirius, which was shipwrecked on Norfolk Island. He elected to stay there (it was a very young colony), and married a convict woman from the second Fleet. Prior to Norfolk, he was part of the first exploration from the new colony of Sydney, up the Hawkesbury River. He spied a bit of land there, which he was much later granted. He was also part of the Matthew Flinders sailing adventure around Tasmania, and there are a couple of points named after him (Hibbs) - but they are in the most rugged inhospitable area!
He also did a supply run between Norfolk Island and Sydney. He was once shipwrecked on the run, and he and the few survivors turned up in Newcastle with no clothes - and thus he turned his back on the sea and settled to farming his land on the Hawkesbury. They didn't do to well on the land though, getting flooded out, living in a cave for a period of time, and selling off most of the land.
There is an old family legend, that he was also on the Endeavour with Captain Cook, as a cabin boy, but it is not proven.
If he had written an account it would have been some story! When he died in his late 80's, he was the oldest First Fleeter left.

[Vanessa]

My husband went to school with Marco Pierre White (famous chef in the UK) and Damien Hirst (Formula 1 racing driver). Diana Rigg went to my school (not at the same time, I might add, but her drama teacher, Mrs Greenwood, was still teaching when I was there) and Dame Judi Dench went to my daughter's school, as did A S Byatt and Margaret Drabble.

My mother in law is a white witch!!! Or so she believes.

[donroc]

If we are shifting to schools, I shall brag about my high school, Lowell in San Francisco, the oldest public HS west of the Mississippi and 100% academic --no shops or Home Ec courses

My graduating class included Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist) two prima ballerinas, Nancy Johnson and Janet Sassoon, Ron Vogel, early Playboy photographer, John Traina, Danielle Steele's 4th husband, and Ken Flower all-American basketball at USC.

What follows is an abbreviated list of famous alums and attendees in the arts:

Diebenkorn and Calder

Cartoonists Rube Goldberg and Marty Links (Emmy Lou and Bobby Sox)

Author Irving Stone and the screenwriter of Tugboat Annie and Shirley Temple Films.

Composer of California Here I Come and If You Knew Susie.

Showbiz: Frank Fay, Bill Gaxton, Wayne Morris, Carol Channing (donated $100,000 for a new school theater), Bill Bixby, Benjamin Bratt.

[Madeleine]

Not much exciting in my family, except that a Governor/ Senator Taft is apparently one of our ancestors (somehow) and we're also distantly related to the actress Angela Lansbury! That's on my mum's side, I know very little about my dad's side. Like several of you on here, my great-grandparents fled from Eastern Europe and settled in the UK around the turn of the last century, and most of the records have been lost. I'm quite envious of one of my friends who traced her family back to the 1600s, and found a long-lost cousin, whose daughter goes to the same school that we both did.

Sweetpotatoboy, that's lovely to hear that your cousins are all in touch with each other now, after all that time.

[Alaric]

About the only famous alum that went to my high school is an Olympic swimmer and a couple of AFL players. The school is only twenty years old though.

[Leyland]

Through my Alabama Travis ancestors, I'm descended from a trader of Scottish descent named Edward Vann and his Chickasaw wife, Mary King. She was a daughter of Squirrel King, a Chickasaw leader of the New Windsor (SC) Settlement until 1758. Edward Vann's brother Clement married into the Cherokee nation and his son's family did very well in 18th/early 19th century Georgia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Vann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Vann ... toric_Site

I'm planning a Vann/King personal research project in the next year or so by visiting SC and GA local libraries and SC native historical sites pertaining the Chickasaw Nation (if I can find any). The Vanns, et al, really intrigue me as adventurers, heroes, rogues and outlaws.

[Ludmilla]

My life is about as non-eventful and boring as it gets. I came from a blue-collar, lower working class family in middle of po-dunk nowhere mid-Americana. I was the youngest of five children and by the time I came along my parents had stopped taking vacations. I don't remember going anywhere as a kid other than to the major cities a few hours away.

The only famous person I almost know is actor Brad Pitt who is my age and attended same university I did. (Back then, we didn't think he was very good looking, but I do remember him having a roving eye for the hot sorority girls).

My great aunt and uncle (who are now deceased) loved genealogy and worked on creating a book about our family history. I don't know what happened to all of their research, but they had some interesting stories about 18th and 19th century American life (the period they had the most info on). I do know they traced my father's paternal line back to 11th or 12th century England. My mother's family was Irish and Welsh, I think, but I'm really not sure.

[diamondlil]

[quote=""Alaric""]About the only famous alum that went to my high school is an Olympic swimmer and a couple of AFL players. The school is only twenty years old though.[/quote]

The only famous person I can think of that went to any of my schools is cyclist Stuart O'Grady.

[EC2]

What a fun post - I've been enjoying everyone's contributions!

Nothing in my family. We were all blue collar Lancashire mill workers in the past, although one kleptomaniac Victorian rellie pinched a Tudor chair out of a church when it was being refurbished. It stood in my great aunt's hall for decades, and when she died in her 90's in the 1990's, it came to me... so I have a misappropriated piece of glorious historic furniture!
My husband is related to UK 50's and 60's pop star Tommy Steel (real name Tommy Hicks) and star of the film Half a Sixpence. I think he also stared in Barnum for a while. My younger son Simon has a similar look about him. Dh's family also have Jewish roots and escaped some holocaust or other in the 19thC and settled in London's East end. They dumped their roots though and several generations down the line are of atheist persuasion and very intermingled.

[diamondlil]

I don't know anything all that interesting about my family really either.