While I am creating AI-assisted biographies and stories about my American Revolutionary War soldiers, and posting them in My "America 250" Compendium - Posts About My Revolutionary War Ancestors - Updated to 11 March 2026 as part of my own America250 celebration, I don't have any direct ancestors who signed the Declaration of Independence on and after 4 July 1776.
So the question "Are You Related To Any Signers of the Declaration of Independence?" from a devoted reader provided a challenge. Do I have Declaration signers who are cousins of mine?
I could take a list of the 56 signers of the Declaration and do research on them, but I know that they are all listed in the FamilySearch Family Tree and in the WikiTree collaborative family tree.
The BYU Family History Technology Lab has developed a number of research tools that work with the FamilySearch Family Tree, including one called Relative Finder. Of course, a user of Relative Finder has to have a profile in the FamilySearch Family Tree with connections to ancestors back in time for it to work properly.
Relative Finder has created groups of famous people, and one of the groups is "Declaration Signers." Here are the groups:
I clicked the Declaration Signers group and then saw a list of 41 signers of the Declaration who are linked to me as a relative in the FamilySearch Family Tree. Here is the list from Relative Finder:
Relative Relationship Common Ancestor
Robert Treat Paine 1st Cousin 8 times removed Samuel Treat
Joseph Hewes 3rd Cousin 6 times removed John Pike
William Ellery 3rd Cousin 7 times removed Peter Tallman
John Adams 3rd Cousin 8 times removed ThomasBoylston
Josiah Bartlett 3rd Cousin 8 times removed Richard Bartlett
Samuel Adams 3rd Cousin 8 times removed Henry Adams
William Whipple 3rd Cousin 8 times removed MatthewWhipple
Samuel Huntington 4th Cousin 6 times removed Joan Coleson
Thomas Stone 4th Cousin 7 times removed Dorothy Poynton
Roger Sherman 4th Cousin 8 times removed Richard Ravens
Benjamin Harrison 5th Cousin 6 times removed John Gorsuch
Thomas Nelson 5th Cousin 6 times removed John Gorsuch
John Granville Penn 5th Cousin 7 times removed Roger Glover
MatthewThornton 5th Cousin 7 times removed John Thayer
Stephen Hopkins 5th Cousin 7 times removed Jaquita Agatha Young
Carter Braxton 6th Cousin 6 times removed Ralph Grey
Richard Henry Lee 6th Cousin 6 times removed Lady Anne Lovelace
Samuel Chase 6th Cousin 6 times removed Thomas Chase
Thomas Jefferson 6th Cousin 6 times removed Sir ThomasWilde
Oliver Wolcott 5th Cousin 9 times removed Humphrey Blake
Francis Lightfoot Lee 6th Cousin 7 times removed Edward Stanley
George Clymer 6th Cousin 7 times removed Anne Holme
William Williams 7th Cousin 5 times removed StephenWoodgate
Abraham Clark 7th Cousin 6 times removed Anne Pakenham
Charles Carroll 7th Cousin 6 times removed Alice Townhende
John Hancock 7th Cousin 6 times removed John Bourchier
Thomas Lynch 7th Cousin 6 times removed Robert Goche
John Witherspoon 7th Cousin 7 times removed Agnes Cunningham
Philip Livingston 7th Cousin 7 times removed Edith Wilcox
William B Hooper 7th Cousin 7 times removed Simon Stone
Thomas Heyward 8th Cousin 5 times removed John Strutt
John Hart 7th Cousin 8 times removed Marmaduke William Neepe
George Walton 9th Cousin 4 times removed Anne Pakenham
Richard Stockton 11th Cousin John Rolfe
Caesar Rodney 8th Cousin 7 times removed Margaret Despenser
Arthur Middleton 9th Cousin 5 times removed Catherine de Courtenay
Benjamin Rush 9th Cousin 5 times removed Thomas Godbold
Francis Hopkinson 9th Cousin 5 times removed Piers de Legh
George Wythe 9th Cousin 5 times removed Wilhelm Ortels
Lyman Hall 9th Cousin 5 times removed John Watson
Lewis Morris 9th Cousin 6 times removed Simon Wiseman
But (and it's a BIG But), are these Signers really related to me? I know that some are because I recognize the Common Ancestor name, and have done my own research on my line and on some of the Signer lines. I also know that some of the lines from me back to the purported Common Ancestor are wrong or incomplete -- perhaps my research is wrong, or the relationships in the FamilySearch Family Tree have been corrected after the Tree was used by Relative Finder (perhaps years ago). In other words, I don't know if the Relative Finder source is up-to-date.
On Relative Finder, the user can click on the Signer's name and can see the lines from the Common Ancestor down to the Signer and the user. Here is my line with Robert Treat Paine, my closest relative on the list above:
[Note that the list on my side extends past the bottom of the screen capture]
So, the answer to the reader's question is YES -- I am related to at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence, and probably to at least 10 to 15 others. I'm still working on evaluating the other 40, although I think that my relationships with most of the Signers from New England are correct. I'm not so sure about Signers from the other colonies, especially when the Common Ancestor is more than 12 generations ago.
For those interested, here is the Robert Treat Paine profile on FamilySearch Family Tree. And here is his article on Wikipedia.
Are you related to one or more Signers of the Declaration of Independence? If so, tell us how in your own blog post or social media post.
Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver
The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/05/dear-randy-are-you-related-to-any.html
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