But the most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.
Adriana Trigiani
My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.
Alan Garner
My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.
Aliko Dangote
Both of my grandfathers fought in the Second World War, and my great-grandfather died at the Somme in the First World War. I never truly believed that the War just finished and everyone was happy-clappy, brought out the bunting, and felt everything was okay again. That's definitely not my impression of the fall-out of war.
Andrea Riseborough
My father, John, ran the Dowd Insurance Co. in town, which was started by his great-grandfather. My mother, Dolores, was a homemaker who kept an eye on all of us.
Ann Dowd
Now that I know about my great-great-grandfather, I feel that John Reid and I would have got on well together.
Anne Reid
As a fluke, my great-grandfather hit one of the largest oil reserves in California.
Armie Hammer
My great-great-grandfather Julius founded the Communist Party in New York.
A male can be a boy, a man, a love/husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, but they don't have any knowledge what's happening inside a woman's body. That's what I had learnt in my early married life.
Arunachalam Muruganantham
The family on my mom's side, their whole business is inventing and pitching stuff. My grandfather is in infomercials. He's a pitchman, so if you're ever watching TV late at night, you'll probably see him pitching knives. My great-grandfather also invented the plastic cheese grater.
Ashley Tisdale
I come from a line of railroad men. My great-grandfather was a surveyor for the Burlington Railroad.
Bill Moseley
There might well have been an Irish great-great-grandfather of mine back then in the 1800s.
Canelo Alvarez
Smoking-related heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather died in their early 40s.
Chloe Madeley
My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.
Christopher Plummer
Discovering that my great-great-grandfather Harry was Australasian clog-dancing champion in 1871 was extraordinary.
Craig Revel Horwood
My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling.
Dan Aykroyd
My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?
David Hyde Pierce
I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!
Dick Van Dyke
Both my New Hampshire great-grandfathers wore facial hair: the Copperhead who fought in the war and the sheep farmer too old for combat.
Donald Hall
I live in the house my great-grandfather moved to in 1865... I spent all my summers here as a kid haying with my grandfather, and it was my favorite place in the world.
If I were related to Monet, I don't know if I would be comfortable becoming an artist because it's too much, the comparison. If I wrote a book and put it out, the comparison to my great-grandfather, the comparison would be hilarious. Every critic, it would be their dream, they'd tear me apart.
Going back to Georgiana Drew and John Drew, and my great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore, and it was such a sort of circus of odd, interesting people that loved acting.
In rural parts of China, it's like stepping back into the era of my grandfather or great-grandfather - not much has changed.
My great-grandfather was in the army in India, and we have photographs of my family there in full Victorian dress. They're incredibly romantic.
There is no need to tell you that the 'Prince of Salina' is the Prince Lampedusa, my great-grandfather Giulio Fabrizio.
My maternal great-grandfather Don Juan del Gallego was a Spanish adventurer from Asturias, Spain. He sailed on a galleon ship to the Philippines. He then went to the Bicol region to build a town that eventually became known as Del Gallego.
My great-grandfather started in the coal mines, and my great grandmother made 10 pounds of bread every Saturday morning that we delivered to the neighbors. It was always about giving back. These kinds of things drive me to make a difference.
You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know?
I was interested in public service, and looking back at my father, my grandfather and two great-grandfathers, well, yeah, that's what they did, too. And I think public service, like journalism, done right is a really honourable, really important profession.
My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr.
My great-grandfather came here as a refugee from the pogrom in Ukraine.
My great-grandfather was the last ruler of the Choctaw Nation, and from birth, I was taught that my role was to restore the power and the glory to my bloodline.
My great-great-great-grandfather or something, I think his father came before him; but, in the 1840s, he was a circuit-riding Baptist preacher.
My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.
My great-great-grandfather lived to age 28, my immigrant great-grandfather Pedro Gotiaoco died at 66, my grandfather was 68, and my father died at 34.
The great-great-grandfather of my mother was probably using gelatins.
My own great-grandfather suffered so much from asthma that he had to walk a mile or two behind the covered wagons crossing the plains to avoid the dust. However, he always arrived at his destination and did his share of the work.
We moved to South Central Iowa to the farm where my dad had grown up, where my grandfather had grown up. The house was actually, it was a tiny little house. It was about 600 square feet and it was built by my great-grandfather. And that's the house I spent time in as a child.
My great-grandfather, Peter O'Hara, was born in Ireland, I believe, in County Clare. His father, my great-great-grandfather, had actually come to America a generation before when times were very bad in Ireland. He worked in the Pennsylvania area and did well with horses and farming.
My great-grandfather played organ for silent movies. Talkies in, Gramps out.
If your great-great-grandfather participated on the Confederate side, and you hold some sentimental value to that, and you want to fly the flag and hang their picture up in your home, that's fine. But it should not be on anything that taxpayers pay for, because taxpayers are a part of the Union, not the Confederacy.
After music, trees are my passion. My great-grandfather was a forester, so maybe it is genetic. My father would take me for walks in the forest and sometimes I would play truant with him. 'You won't learn anything in a communist school, my boy,' he would say. He loved trees too.
I was very fortunate, because I don't think many people get to spend time with their great-grandfathers. So, he passed away when I was 15, so I spent a lot of time with him. We lived together. He traveled a lot, but when he was here, we lived together.
In a way, being born is a sort of ecological contagion. When you have longevity of family, we remember our grandfathers and maybe our great-grandfathers. We somehow don't have the capacity in modern life to remember further than that. All of the ramifications of their lives have an effect on us, and we're not aware of it.
I'm inspired every day by the great captains of industry and enlightened entrepreneurs like my great-great-grandfather and founder of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, who personally knew all his workers and gave so much to this country, or Adriano Olivetti, unique and innovative in every way.
My great-grandfather was a variety hall comedian called Billy Mack.
Blue Ivy can say she knows who her great-great-great-great-grandfather is. How many people can say that?
All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.
My great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, was my biggest hero in life, my biggest inspiration behind everything I do.
I do everything I do to pay tribute to my great-grandfather.
