I’ve Joined the “Related to Someone Famous” Club: 52 Ancestors 2023 Prompt “Membership”

 

FDR is My Cousin? FamilySearch Sends Me Down a Long and Winding Road

William Chandler: 1636-1698 (Maternal 7^th Great-Grandfather)
Mary Clark Dane: 1638-1679 (Maternal 7^th Great-Grandmother)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 1882-1945 (Maternal 7^th Cousin 1x Removed)

 

I received a curious email from Family Search yesterday. The subject line read, “Roxana, you’re related to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Come see how!” Since a friend had just made a Facebook post about how Family Search told her she was Helen Keller’s 5^th cousin several times removed, I realized this must be a new marketing tool the site is trying out. I couldn’t resist. Who wouldn’t want to be related to FDR? The Fireside Chats guy. The “nothing to fear but fear itself” guy. The “day that shall live in infamy” guy. And of course, the man married to Eleanor Roosevelt, who may have been even more amazing than FDR. I opened the email and headed down a confusing path, but a path that did indeed show FDR and I are distant cousins.

According to the email, we were 5^th Cousins 3x Removed. I was surprised. How could we be so closely related? I pulled up Family Search’s chart, which appears below.

I recognized the names of our shared ancestors, William Chandler and Mary Clark Dane, my maternal 7^th Great-Grandparents. I had already confirmed my descent from William and Mary Chandler, so I was comfortable with that side of the relationship chart. However, as soon as I began poking around on Franklin’s side, I started finding problems.

According to Family Search’s wiki family tree, while I was descended from the Chandlers’ son Thomas Chandler, FDR was descended from their daughter Hannah Chandler, who married a Nathaniel Robbins. I was able to find some Ancestry documentation that convinced me that Hannah married Nathaniel Robbins and had a son named Thomas Robbins. However, the Thomas Robbins in the Family Search wiki’s chart only lived one year: he was born in 1696 and died in 1697. I seriously doubted a baby could marry and father children. Thankfully, Ancestry pointed me to the Chandler’s other son Thomas, named after his dead brother and born six years later on August 11, 1703. I rolled my eyes and didn’t even bother to try to fix this sadly all too typical Family Search error. Wikis have their perils. I just added the correct information to my more accurate Ancestry tree.

The correct Thomas Robbins did marry a Ruth Johnson, and I was able to find a baptism record for their son Nathaniel Robbins, born in April 1726. I was also able to confirm Family Search’s contention that Nathaniel married Elizabeth Hutchinson in 1757.

But then the Family Search tree had another problem. A big one. Nathaniel Robbins died in 1795, and his wife Elizabeth died two years earlier in 1793. Ancestry had info that confirmed those dates. However, the next rung down on the Family Search chart was Nathaniel’s supposed daughter Catherine Robbins Lyman, who married Warren Delano. She was born, Family Search said, in 1825.

Okay. Two big problems there. First, why was her surname Lyman when it should be Robbins? And how could she be Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s daughter when they had been dead over 30 years before her birth in 1826?

At this point, I debated throwing in the towel. The tree Family Search was relying on was obviously poorly researched, probably put together by a novice genealogist.

So what might I find over on Ancestry? Nathaniel and Elizabeth had at least three children that I could find. The eldest, Edward Hutchinson Robbins, was born in 1758, and married Elizabeth Murray in 1785. Edward became the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, so his existence and those of his several children were comparatively easy to verify.

Edward Hutchinson Robbins

Among his children was a daughter named Anne Jean Robbins, born July 3, 1789. She married Joseph Lyman around 1811. Aha! There was the source of the mystery surname, Lyman. And sure enough, the last of Anne Jean and Joseph Lyman’s children was a daughter named Catherine Robbins Lyman, born January 12, 1825. So it appears that the Family Search tree had simply skipped two entire generations of FDR’s ancestors, listing Catherine’s great-grandparents as her parents.

Catherine Robbins Lyman Delano

I was able to quickly confirm that Catherine Lyman married Warren Delano, and among their children was a daughter named Sarah Anne Delano, who, as we all should know, married the much older James Roosevelt in 1880, and gave birth to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 30, 1882.

James Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Sarah Delano Roosevelt

So Family Search was both wrong and right. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was NOT my fifth cousin 3x removed. However, he WAS my seventh cousin 1x removed. Despite the problems with Family Search’s tree info, I am grateful for their efforts to pair users up with famous distant cousins—it was an entertaining little puzzle.

So yes, I’ve joined that rarified club: Proud Distant Relatives of Famous Persons. Achieving membership, as we’ve seen, may be a bit tricky, but once you’ve found some documents to back up the relationship, you’re in for life—no membership fee required.