Sydney Sweeney Is Related to Marilyn Monroe, and I Am Related to Everyone

Sydney Sweeney wore an old Ceil Chapman dress to an awards event, one very much like the dress Marilyn Monroe wore on the cover of Life magazine in 1952. The genealogy company MyHeritage saw this, and did what any business would do when it sees an opportunity: it climbed a family tree with a flashlight.

According to MyHeritage, Sweeney and Monroe are ninth cousins, once removed. Both families go back to Ezra Perry, an early settler in Sandwich, Massachusetts, who lived from around 1625 to 1689. Sweeney's line comes down through her father. Monroe's comes down through her biological father, Charles Stanley Gifford.

I want to be fair to Ezra Perry. He did nothing wrong. He moved to Massachusetts, which in the 1600s took real courage, since the only entertainment was church and the only other entertainment was being accused of something at church. He had children, they had children, and three hundred years later his descendants are in the newspaper for wearing dresses. That's the American Dream, and it took the long way around.

Now, ninth cousins. I looked into this. A ninth cousin is somebody who shares a set of grandparents with you about ten generations back. At that distance, you aren't family anymore. You're a crowd. I'd wager I'm ninth cousins with half the people at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and not one of them has ever let me cut the line.

So is it meaningful? No. Is it marketing? Gloriously. A company got every entertainment outlet in the country to print its name without anybody spitting in a tube. I've seen men work forty years for less publicity, and some of them were senators.

Here's the lesson, and then I'll let you go. Go back far enough, and every one of us is related to somebody famous, and also to a horse thief, and usually it's the same fellow. The famous get the press release. The rest of us get the horse thief, and we're expected to be grateful.