Just found these “cousin” calculators. I can really use these charts to determine just how close a cousin I am to Rear Admiral Richard Byrd, polar explorer and aviator. We both descend from Thomas Rolfe, the only child of John Rolfe and his Powhatan wife Rebecca aka Amonute Matoaka, popularly known as “Pocahontas”. And one of my favorite actors, Edward Norton, does as well and may be a close cousin of mine, cool. Looks like I’ve got some chart calculating to do.
NOTE ABOUT “POCAHONTAS“: If you descend from a Founding Family of early America before nationhood as I do, there’s a likelihood you descend from “Pocahontas”. Its kind of like the Charlemagne descent enigma. The descent from an Indian Princess has become a cliché in geneaology because America is a very young country and had a super low population and much unexplored territory in the 1600s. There was a shortage of English women here and mailorder brides were a thing. Many of the Englishmen coming to the New World intermarried with Native American women due to their English wives unable to survive the long, difficult journey by ship, or by marrying native women for marital alliances to keep peace and make trade deals with the tribes. Love conquers all, doesn’t it? Because of this, I have Native American ancestry all the way down to my maternal Great-Grandmother.
