Dieter wrote:

Serious or a joke, that Bing and Noel Coward are distant cousins?
https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-chart.php?name=22396+noel+coward&kin=21654+bing+crosby&via=4518+richard+fitzalan

Dieter,
How interesting! I imagine an expert genealogist could help, if we have any out there?

However from a mathematical point of view it seems highly likely. 15 cousins share the same 14x Great Grandparents, who would have numbered 65,536. This ignores the slight complication of the "removed" bit.

Historically people had large families, but there were high mortality rates, so  assuming that an average of just two offspring in each familial line had in their turn just two offspring, the total number of descendants in the most recent generation (all of whom could call themselves 15th cousins to each other) will be 2,147,483,648! 

Until an unstated date in Bing's line, the families were based in England, the current population of which is a tiny fraction of this figure, which just shows how much interbreeding there has been, which would be true of any population anywhere. 

I have spoken to a genealogical hobbyist who has given some helpful background. Tracing from reliable records so far back is very problematical - In England official records of Births, Marriages and Deaths commenced in 1837 and before that Church records have to be used in most cases. Many have not survived and they only started in the 1530s. For a long time they were inconsistent and often inadequate for genealogical purposes. Before that very little exists apart from the aristocracy, and many of those are incorrect because the people involved made exaggerated claims. My informant could not help about American records.

The chart to which you have linked goes back to 1318. My informant sounds a note of caution -"the chart clearly shows that it is drawn from numerous different published genealogies, which will vary in quality, and it is worrying that details are lacking for many individuals, which suggests simple name matching rather than detailed matches based on name, date and locality. For these reasons I doubt the precise details. Nevertheless over so many generations, in an area confined, as to three quarters of the tree to England, and much of the remainder to the Eastern US, it would be surprising if there were not several links. The challenge is in identifying the links and proving it". 

 

That is fascinating, and I have been an amateur genalogist for awhile. I have researched my family and gotten back to the 1400s on some of the branches.

I am on Geni.com, and it lets you trace relations to famous people. I am remotely related to Bing:

"Bing Crosby is your second great aunt's second cousin's wife's 6th great uncle's wife's 9th great nephew."

When do I expect to start getting my royalty checks?

 

Last edited by Lobosco (27/1/2019 10:01 pm)