My Cousin Hillary... And Yours Too?

I've been on a bit of a hiatus for the last six months or so, taking a break from "debating" politics as much as possible and only visiting ATS occasionally. Over these months, I've knocked out some projects around the house that I'd been putting off, gone to Mexico a couple times (those caravans are gonna lead themselves — joking, I've been working on becoming an professional alcoholic) and devoted some time to other hobbies that I'd been neglecting.

As some of you may already know, one of my hobbies is genealogy. It's something I picked up, along with my love of researching Fortean phenomena, from my grandmother. I'm fortunate in that my grandmother authored a few books on her own ancestry, so a lot of that research has been done. However this also led me to largely ignore those branches in my own research over the years. One of those branches is French via Canada.

Another thing I did was binge watch 14 seasons of the TV series, Supernatural — catching up just in time for the announcement that the next season will be their last. Supernatural is filmed in Canada and there are a number of French Canadians in the crew. One of those folks has a not all that common surname that I recognized from my own tree and so I decided to see if I could find a connection.

If you're a person who has spent any significant amount of time working on your own family tree, you're probably quite familiar with spending countless hours tracking down ancestors and distant relations who aren't particularly notable. So I wasn't really expecting much going in... but then I hit the mother lode.

Two of the very earliest European settlers of Quebec are among my 9th great-grandparents. As it turns out, they were really good at the whole having descendants thing:

Zacharie Cloutier

Zacharie Cloutier (c. 1590 – September 17, 1677) was a French carpenter who immigrated to New France in 1634 in the first wave of the Percheron Immigration from the former province of Perche, to an area that is today part of Quebec, Canada. He settled in Beauport and founded one of the foremost families of Quebec.

Jean Guyon

Jean Guyon du Buisson (September 18, 1592 – May 30, 1663) was the patriarch of one of the earliest families to settle on the North shore of New France's St. Lawrence River.

Guyon made his living as a master mason and, according to Perche-born genealogist Madame Montagne, was regarded as having an excellent reputation as a mason.[2] In 1615, he helped construct the Saint-Aubin de Tourouvre church steeple's interior stone staircase and in 1625 he was charged with the re-building of Mortagne's fortifications.[2]

Fun fact, the two friends built the oldest house in Canada, Giffard's manor house.

According to researchers, by 1800, Cloutier had 10,850 descendants, making he and his wife the couple with the most French Canadian descendants and in second place behind them are Jean Guyon and his wife, who had 9,674 married descendants by 1900. Today their descendants number in the hundreds of thousands and many people are likely descended from both families.

If you're Québécois or have French Canadian ancestry, there's a fairly decent chance that you're also a descendant of one or both, making us cousins. And not just us but a slew of notable folks... including one Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I've done the research to establish the relation to a number of individuals but the list is pretty long. Here's some of the more famous, there's a number of lists you can find for both families, but I'm going the lazy route and taking from the Cloutier list on Wikipedia.

David Archambault (leader of the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation)
Justin Bieber
Joseph-Armand Bombardier (founder of Bombardier)
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
Jim Carrey
Madonna
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Celine Dion
Ricky Gervais
Ryan Gosling
Robert Goulet
Julianne Hough
Angelina Jolie
Jack Kerouac
Beyonce
Solange
Lyndon LaRouche
Avril Lavigne
Alanis Morrisette
Julie Payette (Governor General of Canada)
Chris Pratt
Louis St. Laurent (12th PM of Canada)
Meghan Trainor
Alex Trebek
Justin Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Shania Twain

If you think we might be related and you don't want to post any surnames here, hit me up U2U.

a reply to: theantediluvian


Old Zach and Jean were really horny people

I v'e been reading this guy's work for a few years and many of the names in your list come up often.
You may be related to people even farther up the food chain than those you listed. I apologize if this is old news but
Someone might find it interesting.

mileswmathis.com...

a reply to: theantediluvian

Welcome back.

I just hope your hiatus didn't affect you the same way it affected another member.

And hopefully your return can inspire others to follow suit as well, because admittedly it hasn't been the same around here without all of you crazy lefties.

Slinging mud at the same 5 or so remaining members (that seem to be shuffling accounts) has become...

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: theantediluvian


Old Zach and Jean were really horny people

I'm telling ya, of all my ancestors, the French Canadians had the most kids. My one set of French Canadian great great grandparents had 20 kids. 20. It's like being descended from Duggars.

a reply to: DukeMisterio

Wow. There's a lot going on there. I'll check out his genealogical stuff though. Thanks!

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

I spent a total of 16 days out of the last 180 getting completely trashed on rum drinks and tequila shots at a swim up bar. Literally nothing affects me.

a reply to: theantediluvian

I mean you can only drown yourself in your own chagrin for so long before you realize that life goes on.

I've always had faith in you.

a reply to: theantediluvian


Nice to see you back.
Sounds like you've had a few adventures.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
a reply to: theantediluvian


Nice to see you back.
Sounds like you've had a few adventures.

If we're counting adventures in getting sunburns while binge drinking, then yes I'm a regular Indiana Jones.

The sad thing is before we went in November, I was planning all the Mayan ruins we would see. We ended up not seeing any but I told myself we'd at least hit up Chichen Itza the next time. Then we were in the Cancun area again last week and didn't leave the resort once lol.

We're going back in November again (my wife and I have decided we're NEVER going to be home for Thanksgiving again) and I'm seriously going to set aside a day to see Chichen Itza and maybe another for Tulum. (or so I keep telling myself)

I am a mutt.
Irish, English, German, Choctaw.
I'm black from the waist down.
Last male to carry my family name.
And that was most likely a pseudonym adopted by my moonshiner great grandfather in an attempt to dodge arrest.
I'm only attracted to women that there is no possibility I'm related to.
I can brag that I've got a John Wesley Hardin and a Clyde Barrow in the mix...possibly a J. Edgar Hoover...not so proud of that one.
I'll give a bottoms up to the bottle in honor of that strange breathing apparatus your avatar is wearing and your peace and health.

a reply to: theantediluvian


Sorry you missed the ruins this time around.
I'm a lounge-by-the-pool-with-an-umbrella-drink guy, myself...but one of the nice things about Cancun, is there are some pretty spectacular Mayan ruins within walking distance of the big hotels.

Hillary Clinton
Justin Trudeau
Justin Beiber!!!

Hitler is no longer the 1st person I would go back to assasinate if I had a time machine

P.s glad to see you back

I have very important relatives in my ancestry. After all, without my parents and grandparents, I would not be here, neither would my kids. So my ancestors are very important people to me....good thing abortions were not legal.

In reality, odds are we are *all* more related than not. Creating children creates networks; currently we're all within five individual connections from one another.

Check this out: