Famous names in the Bristol Parish Registers

Posted by Ancestry Team on September 9, 2019 in Famous Faces

Parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials are one of the main staples of the family historian. Anyone tracing their family tree back further than civil registration and the census in England will almost certainly look at these sources. Indeed, many of you will have spent hours scrolling through microfilms of registers in the pursuit Read More

A death less ordinary

Posted by Web Operations on February 6, 2019 in Famous Faces

I have a confession to make. My interest in Australian history has never really extended to European male explorers. Yes, they performed amazing feats to understand the world in which we live but so did many others – Rose de Freycinet, for example – who are nowhere near as lorded. But I have always had Read More

Discovering a famous sporting ancestor

Posted by Web Operations on December 13, 2018 in Famous Faces

Cassie Mercer embarks on a quest to understand more about a famous cricketer in the family tree. The Aussie cricket season is here! Just like thongs and singlets, melting ice-cream and mossies, cricket represents an Australian summer. The game became all the more interesting to me when I discovered that an ancestor of mine was Read More

Real James Bond Found Hiding in an Archive

Posted by Web Operations on March 8, 2014 in Famous Faces

Sidney Reilly, the secret agent widely believed to be the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s legendary character James Bond, has been uncovered in a very un-Bondlike location: an online archive. The record (shown above) was found in the British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920 collection, which details medals earned by more than 4.8 million WWI Read More

George Clooney’s Surprising Honest Family Connection

Posted by Web Operations on January 25, 2014 in Famous Faces

After researching more than three centuries of Abraham Lincoln’s family tree, Ancestry family historians have revealed a Lincoln family secret: famous actor George Clooney is related to the former president. The family bloodline for both notable figures links to Lincoln’s maternal grandmother Lucy Hanks. This common ancestor makes Clooney Lincoln’s half-first cousin five times removed. Those Read More

Celebrity Yearbooks: The Way They Were

Posted by Web Operations on January 16, 2014 in Famous Faces

For better or worse, almost all of us have been immortalised in a school photograph. Our U.S. School Yearbooks collection has over 7 million images that take you back to a time that will never be forgotten. You may recognise some famous faces in these records… This Yearbook photo may be 42 years old but Read More

Hunger Games Hometown Favorites – Katniss? Haymitch? Coriolanus Snow?

Posted by Web Operations on November 27, 2013 in Famous Faces

Originally authored by Ancestry.com We could not wait for the release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second film in The Hunger Games trilogy, and thought it would be fun to map out the Districts in the movie, as if Panem actually existed, across the United States. Our beloved Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson) both come from Read More

JFK’s assassination in new historical records

Posted by Web Operations on November 21, 2013 in Famous Faces

Nearly 100 years of Texas birth and death records now available online, including key figures who investigated the death of JFK and reported on the events in the days that followed.  This week we released 6.5 million new birth and death records from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Spanning nearly a century (1890-1980), the Read More

A Nation of Immigrants

Posted by Web Operations on August 29, 2013 in Famous Faces

With the immigration debate at the top of the agenda this election, would Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott’s past deem them eligible to live in Australia by current immigration standards? No matter where your affections lie – there are some interesting and thought-provoking tales of origins that could make either Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott Read More