I got an email from FamilySearch letting me know that I am related to someone famous. This is the first time I’ve discovered a relationship to a celebrity. Maybe Henry Louis Gates, Jr’s team could find others. But FS found that I am related to Wilbur Wright. Why not Orville? I wondered . . . .
We are many generations removed, but it is interesting that FS took my line back further than I had.
Wilbur is found by traveling back through my maternal grandfather’s family. Grandpa is Adrian Zuidweg, at the bottom of the following image. Wilbur is contemporary with Grandpa’s mother, Jacoba Wilhelmina DeKorn Zuidweg, or Cora, as she was called.
See on Wilbur’s side, the right side of the image above, that Wright and Reeder have lost their Dutch names, but this is a Dutch line, and above Reeder is the name Van Cleve. Wilbur’s Dutch relatives came to the United States way before mine. In fact you have to go back to Grietje Cornelis van Ness, born about 1626 in the Netherlands in Wilbur’s family. I am guessing that his family were some of the first Dutch settlers in America, settling in the New York and New Jersey area. Whereas mine came in the 1800s and early 1900s and went straight to Michigan.
The point at which Wilbur’s and my relatives shared the same father is back even further. See the next image.
Hendrick Gerritsen van Nes (born 1580) and Margrieta Claase Kemp (born 1574) had children that spawned the lines of my family and of Wilbur’s. I think they are my tenth greats, but don’t quote me on that. Interestingly, Hendrick was born in Noordeloos in South Holland and died in New Amsterdam in America. But Margrieta sadly passed away in the Netherlands and never made the trip to the New World.
At least now I can say I am related to someone famous. And who knew Wilbur Wright was part Dutch?
The Family Kalamazoo 