Newsletter

January News From the Global Family Reunion

Hello Cousin,

Hope all is well with your branch of the family.

Thought you might want to know the latest with the Global Family Reunion, the biggest, most inclusive, most entertaining family reunion in history (all to benefit the battle against Alzheimer’s.)

The global family tree continues to grow with Jesse Owens-like speed. (And yes, Cousin Jesse is on the tree). It has millions of cousins and is expanding all the time. You probably got five new cousins while reading this sentence. And a couple more just now. And now.

If you haven’t yet been connected to the mega-tree, don’t worry: our awesome research team is working to connect cousins as quickly as possible. We’ve been delightfully overwhelmed with requests and we’re plowing through them.

PRESS
MunnPhotoWe’ve been spreading the One-Family gospel to cousins far and wide. Global Family Reunion founder A.J. Jacobs continues his column in People magazine in which he interviews a famous relative. This week? Actress Olivia Munn (Newsroom), who was delighted to hear that her sixth great grandfather was a horse thief. “Sounds like we’ve got a badass family,” she said. Also of interest: her boyfriend, Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers is her cousin. But it’s distant and through marriage, so we’re pretty sure the relationship is legal in all 50 states.

Other press this month includes The Forward and German magazine Die Welt, which was very complimentary, or at least it seemed that way in the Google translation.

PROJECTS
One of our cousins – Niels Hansen, a Norwegian genealogy enthusiast – is making a supremely cool chart connecting 100 famous and historical figures. We’ll unveil it at the reunion, but here’s a start.

Capture

ACTIVITIES
The reunion will be like a World’s Fair, with presentations, games, exhibits, music and a scavenger hunt. We’re thrilled by our ever-expanding list of presenters. In addition to Henry Louis Gates, comedian Nick Kroll and others, we’ve recently added New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz and comedian Michael Showalter.

We’ll also be unveiling the “Global Family Cookbook,” which we are creating with the website Food52 and editors Sasha Martin, Tami Osmer and Eowyn Langholf. Spoiler alert: There will be prominent placement of Swedish meatballs.

RANDOM NEW MEMBER OF THE FAMILY TREE THAT WE ARE OBSESSED WITH
British soldier “Fighting Jack Churchill.” This guy went into battle armed with a longbow, a broadsword….and bagpipes. In World War II.

UPCOMING
We’re excited to tell you that tickets for the Global Family Reunion will be going on sale very soon in conjunction with the launch of our IndieGogo campaign. All proceeds from the campaign after the cost of the event will go toward battling Alzheimer’s. Stay tuned.

In just a couple weeks, A.J. and the Global Family Reunion team are heading to Salt Lake City for RootsTech and the FGS Conference. A.J. will be a keynote speaker, along with Donny Osmond and Jenna and Barbara Bush. We will also have a booth in the Expo Hall so if you are attending either conference please be sure to stop by and say hello.

EXHIBITORS
We’ve got some great exhibitors, including FamilySearch, MyHeritage and WikiTree. If you’re interested being an exhibitor (and reaching thousands of your closest family members) please get in touch. Details on exhibitor booths will be up on our site soon but if you are interested in learning more now, contact our Exhibit Booth Coordinator, Nina Hoffer, at gfrexhibitors@gmail.com.

HOLIDAY PHOTO THROWDOWN WINNERS
Thanks to all of our cousins who sent us their holiday photos. We had some great entries to choose from and now we’re delighted to announce the winners you voted for here.

As a sample, please enjoy the winner of the Cousin Who was Farthest Away Category: Līga and family of Latvia!

Third Place

Third Place

BRANCH PARTIES
We’re continuing to add to our growing list of official Branch Parties including ones in California, Georgia, Canada and Germany. In Buffalo, the Forest Lawn cemetery will be holding a branch party. Forest Lawn writes that it has “160,000 souls under our perpetual care, including President Millard Fillmore.” Sadly, we can’t count those 160,000 in our total. Still, we’re thrilled.

Some of these parties are on the bigger side. But are you looking for something small and informal? We’d love you to host an gathering of family and friends at your house or apartment. It could be as small as four cousins and a bowl of Cheetos. We call them House Branch Parties.You can stream our great programming and do whatever activities you like, including trivia games and Cheeto-eating contests. (Note: We are not sponsored by Cheetos).

Email Angel Hundley at gfrbranchparties@gmail.com for more info. We’d like to cover a global map with virtual pins of all the House Party sites.

TO DO:

–If you haven’t sent in the names of your grandparents and great grandparents (along with birth dates please!) then shoot an email to us at info@worldfamily.us. (If you have sent this info in previously, we’ve got it! There’s no need to re-send.)

— Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Family-Reunion/223798427785665

— Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlobalReunion15

— Check out all the different ways you can be involved in this epic event!

— Save an official invitation and share it with 10 of your family members and friends

Book your hotel! (Big thanks to NYC & Company for helping secure these great hotel deals for our traveling cousins!)

Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

Your Cousins,
A.J. Jacobs and the Global Family Team

November 2014 Global Family Newsletter

Hello Cousin,

Hope your branch of the family is doing well.

We wanted to give you the latest on the Global Family Reunion, the biggest, most inclusive, most entertaining family reunion in history (all to benefit the battle against Alzheimer’s.)

The Global Family Tree continues to grow. We’ve now connected Beyonce to Brahms, and King George III to George Clooney.

If you haven’t yet been connected to the mega-tree, don’t worry: our awesome research team is working on it. (We’ve been delightfully overwhelmed with requests, but we’re plowing through them).

PRESS:
The Global Family Reunion has received some great coverage from our cousins in the media. Dr. Oz taped an episode about the GFR that will air in a few weeks.

And GFR host A.J. Jacobs continues his column in People magazine where he interviews a notable relative each month. The latest installment: Jim Bob Duggar, the father of 19 and star of the reality show “19 Kids and Counting” on TLC.

(Fun fact: If all 19 of their kids have 19 kids, and the pattern continues, there will be 2 billion Duggars in nine generations).

A.J. also spoke at the delightfully-named World Domination Summit, and his speech is now online. The WDS is a great conference held in Portland, and contains no shortage of Portlandish touches (put it this way: There was a unicyclist in a kilt with a bagpipe. Oh, and he was playing Star Wars theme music. And there were flames shooting out of the bagpipe).

NEW SPEAKERS AND ENTERTAINERS:
We continue to book wonderful speakers and entertainers to make sure all our cousins are properly entertained and enlightened.

Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings will be writing the Ultimate Family Trivia Quiz for the Global Family Reunion. We’ve got humorist Andy Borowitz of the wildly popular Borowitz Report and Maud Newton, who wrote a cover story on genealogy for Harper’s magazine. We’ll also be offering a family storytelling workshop by the group Writopia.

BRANCH PARTIES :
The Global Family Reunion will have simultaneous parties around the world with a live-stream of the talks and entertainment. In addition to some we announced last month — the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri – we’ve added a bunch more locations, including ones in Germany, Hungary and Australia.

If you want to be involved with or know more about Branch Parties, check out our Branch Party FAQ!

UPCOMING:
We’re thrilled to announce that A.J. will be a keynote speaker at the biggest genealogy conference in the world, RootsTech, held in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 11-14, 2015. Another keynote speaker there? Donny Osmond, who is A.J.’s aunt’s third cousin four times removed’s husband’s granddaughter’s husband’s great nephew.   

And don’t forget cousin Morgan Spurlock will be filming a documentary about the Reunion!

PARTNERS:
Our family of partners grows! We’re excited about teaming up with the Federation of Genealogical Societies, an umbrella group of several hundred societies around the world. We’ve also joined forces with the culinary website Food52 to launch a Global Family Reunion recipe contest.

VOLUNTEERS:
We have hundreds of volunteers working to connect people to you and the Global Family, to spread the word via social media, to coordinate activities and food for the event, to reach out to societies and organizations to get them involved. We want to thank them all, whether they are first cousins or 14th cousins.

TO DO:
–If you haven’t sent in the names of your grandparents and great grandparents (along with birth dates please!) then shoot an email to us at info@worldfamily.us.

–Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Family-Reunion/223798427785665

–Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlobalReunion15

–Check out all the different ways you can be involved in this epic event!

–Let 10 of your family members and friends know about the Global Family Reunion.

Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

Your Cousins,
AJ Jacobs and the Global Family Team

Global Family September Newsletter

Hello Cousins,

Hope your branch of the family is doing well.

We wanted to give you a quick update on the Global Family Reunion, the biggest, most inclusive, most entertaining family reunion in history (all to benefit the battle against Alzheimer’s).

We’ve added tens of thousands of relatives to the Big Family in the last month, including Napoleon, Annie Oakley and J.R.R. Tolkien.  So please say hi (bonjour/howdy/suilad) to your new cousins.

And if you haven’t yet been connected to the mega-tree, don’t worry: our team is working on it. (We’ve been delightfully overwhelmed with requests, but we’re plowing through them).

PRESS:
The Global Family Reunion has gotten some amazing coverage  in the last month, including NPR, BuzzFeed and The Guardian (where we figure out how Obama is related to dozens of senators on both sides of the aisle).

GFR host, author A.J. Jacobs, also has a column in People magazine where he interviews a notable cousin every month. (This installment: Valerie Bertinelli, where she talked about her Quaker roots, Jeffrey Dahmer and her bad British accent).

NEW SPEAKERS AND ENTERTAINERS:
We continue to book interesting speakers and performers to make sure all our cousins are thoroughly entertained and thought-provoked on June 6.

NPR Weekend Edition host Scott Simon will be giving a talk in praise of adoption. Spencer Wells of the National Genographic project will speak about DNA. Singers Lisa Loeb and Paul Williams – among more to be announced soon — will rock out.

Oh, and we’ve also booked George Washington, who is A.J.’s aunt’s fifth great aunt’s husband’s great uncle’s wife’s great nephew. Maybe not the actual George Washington. But the best GW re-enactor in America. We want some historical figures at the reunion too.

SATELLITE EVENTS:
The Global Family Reunion will, in fact, be Global. We’re helping to organize branch parties all over the world. (Get it? Branches, as in Family tree?) So far, among others, we have the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Clayton Library Center in Houston, Texas, Allen County Public Library in Wayne, Indiana and the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri. If you want to get involved in a branch party, please contact info@worldfamily.us.

NEW ALZHEIMER’S INITIATIVE:
We want to get more people on the tree – and help battle Alzheimer’s at the same time. Note to genealogists: We are donating $1 to battling Alzheimer’s for every connection made. See here for details.

PARTNERS:
A growing number of great organizations have joined us as partners.  Most recently, we want to welcome FamilySearch to the, uh, family. FamilySearch is huge and helpful, with more than a billion records.

TO DO:
–If you haven’t submitted the names of your grandparents and great grandparents (along with birth dates please!) then shoot an email to us at info@worldfamily.us

–Send us stuff!  Okay, not just any stuff, but we are collecting stories, photos, videos and recipes.  For more details see here.

Become a GFR Ambassador and help spread the word via social media and blogging!

–Check out all the different opportunities to volunteer!

Thank you, my cousins. Looking forward to meeting you all soon!

A.J. Jacobs and the Global Family Reunion team.

Note: The photos are of cousins Christina Hendricks (actor), Chris O’Dowd (actor) and Abraham Lincoln (president).

Watch the Livestream Archive