Celebrity Genealogy Research - My Family Ancestry
About This Site...
My Ancestry Research is a personal genealogy and historical research website documenting more than 25 years of family history discoveries. Rather than offering genealogy services, this site shares original research, historical records, photographs, family stories, and the methods used to uncover generations of ancestors across multiple countries. This is NOT a for-profit business site, but a site where I share my on-going personal family history research - research that has changed what I thought I knew about my own family, and with a truly unexpected trove of famous relatives that my research has revealed.
The list of people contained on this website continues to grow as I find the time to detail each individual with a short mini-biography. Most of the people listed on my site are people that you may know, and they may also be hidden in YOUR family tree! That's the great thing about researching family history - you never know who you may find hiding on a branch of your family tree.
All research into the lives of the individuals listed on this website, as well as my relationship to each person, is the result of my own research as I continue to trace back my family history through the years. My interest in learning more about my own family history started with a letter sent from my maternal Great-Grandfather in 1916 when he was at the front in France during WWI. It was a short letter sent home to his wife, my maternal Great-Grandmother. That lead me to telegram sent from the Canadian Expeditionary Forces to my Great-Grandmother advising her that her husband had been killed in action in October, 1916. He was only 27 years old.
It was the discover of those documents in my recently deceased Grandmother's possessions that made me realize that I knew a lot less about my family than I thought I did. From there, I began to research not only my maternal family, but my paternal family who was an even bigger mystery to me.
25 years later, the mystery still isn't solved, but I have a lot more of the puzzle pieces now than I did when I started. I knew even less about my paternal side of the family than I did my maternal side, but it turns out that 99% of the really interesting family history was hiding there...so well hidden that even my dad and living paternal cousins had no idea of the massive amount of history that that side of the family had hidden away over the centuries. It is primarily my paternal side that the majority of the people listed on this site are related to me, and the discoveries show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
This website is a "work-in-progress" and is meant to serve as a roadmap for current and future generations to help them in their own journey as they discover our shared family history. As new discoveries are found, and once I have fully verified the connection, I will continue to add to this site or, if an error has been discovered, sometimes remove a page from the site.
The reason that I wanted to document the many interesting figures with whom I share DNA is not to brag about being related to these fascinating people, but to help those who dream of being something more than they have been told that they could - or should be. Having this knowledge when I was younger would have been invaluable to me, and hopefully it will help others believe in themselves and to follow their dreams, no matter how outrageous others may think that those dreams are. The people and their stories that are contained on the following pages prove that achieving what others may think is unachievable; it's built into our DNA!
If anyone finds errors on this site, or if you have questions that I may be able to answer for you, please feel free to reach out and I will do my best to respond to you quickly. I am always happy to answer questions about anyone you may find on this site, and I'll do my best to help in any way that I can. The one thing that I can't do though is provide you with contact information or other personal information about any living people listed here - I may be distantly related to them, but that doesn't mean that I know them personally.
When I started this journey, I never would have guessed that I would still be finding new, interesting and amazing family over 20 years later...but that's the great thing about genealogy...it's a never ending journey.
- Brad Taylor-
"You are always capable of more than you imagine that you are; your limits are only as real as your dreams and your belief in them."
