Kate Middleton is Related to a King, Ellen DeGeneres, and Uncle Gary

The following excerpt is from an interesting article in the April 25, 2011 edition of The Star.

Much has been made of Kate Middleton’s pedigree: the coal in her veins, the Ellen DeGeneres connection, the tattooed uncle.

Any woman who marries a royal will have her family tree scoured for signs of weakness, intrigue and significance. As soon as Middleton emerged as a serious girlfriend, U.S. genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner began digging through the documents.

Reitwiesner, who has published genealogies on U.S. political figures, royals and noted Europeans, amassed thousands of British records and plotted out the family lines with a colleague, but died a few weeks before the engagement was announced.

Along with discovering — no surprises here — a working middle class background, Reitwiesner found that Ellen DeGeneres and Middleton, along with Prince William himself, share a common ancestral couple: Sir Thomas Fairfax and Agnes Gascoigne. That makes them all 14th cousins.

“You will have millions of 14th cousins,” said Christopher Child, a genealogist with New England Historic Genealogical Society, who edited Reitwiesner’s account.

Read the full article.