My ancestreal claim to fame is this:
I have a few ancestors that travelled on the Mayflower (Bruce, my ancestors were probably laughing at yours
). Several generations later, Moses Fuller faught in the revolutinary war. We still have the musket he used at the battle of Bunker Hill.
Moses's grand daughter, Sarah Fuller, would go on to be famous. There is a lot Ican tell, but I'll put it in a nutshell. She was Principal of the Horace-Mann School for the Deaf for almost 50 years. It was her who taught Hellen Keller to speak her first sentance, "It is warm." After a few lessons from Sarah, Anne Sullivan took over. Helen and Sarah enjoyed some corrosponadce wiht each other.
Sarah was also very good friends with Alexander Graham Bell. She had very frequent corospondance with hher, and hw would often visit her to work on the telephone where she lived with her sister.
The closest any of my ancestors have ever come to owning a castle is Symond Fiske, who owned a manor. He was entitled to his own coat of arms. His great grandaughter is said to have been the grandmother of John Locke.
I have one more story for you. Owen Fitzpen was a young, adventurous lad who got caught in the tail end of the Ottoman Wars. He was captured by Turkish Pirates in March 24, 1620. For seven years he and several other Christian Captians were held as slaves in Algiers, Algeria. They recieved a chance to escape when he and ten other Dutch and French captives were herded aboard a corsair with 65 Turks. Owen and his ten comrades faught for three hours before the surviving Turks surrendered; 5 of Owen's friends were dead.
The group (with Owen as their captian) set off for Cartagene, Spain. News of his endvaour went all the way to the king of Spain. Owen was summonded to Madrid where he was offered a Captian's position and great favour; however, there was a catch (there always is
). Owen would have to convert to Catholicism, which he did not want to do. Owen respectfully declined, sold the ship for 6,000 pounds sterling, and retirned to England.
I could fill a book full of stories (one of my cousins has). Those are the ones I thought you would find most interesting.