A Twist on Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon--Actual kinship to Kevin and Kyra

On the floor today I watched Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey discover their ancestries. They identify as Swedish and (mainly Jewish) and as Jewish. I of course had to check and find that Maggie and Jake are 14th cousins from me, once removed, by way of the Isaacs, and,thanks to his one Pennsylvania Dutch ancestor Tobias Schucher, Robert Downey Jr and I are connected, not blood kin, through a great array of Germans including Costners and Rudisills. Then I went on the Henry Louis Gates Jr himself and got a connection that starts with 2nd cousin 10 times removed. I had seen the Cory Booker show before and wanted, oh wanted to be kin to that dastardly doctor in Louisiana, but got no path to Cory. For John Lewis I got a wonderfully complex set of connections starting with my fifth great uncle's uncle wife's . . . . I looked at other names and saw Wanda Sykes. I don't know who she is but we are connected. I am happy that the handsome boy John Legend is an actual cousin by way of the Isaacs, so he is kin to the Gyllenhaals. What a good looking bunch to be cousins.
Now, I had to try the degrees of actual genetic relationship between me and Kevin Bacon (13th cousin, once removed) and his wife Kyra Sedgwick (same thing, but independent of his, 13th cousin, once removed). ]
This leaves out the Cherokees and Choctaws but it is fun to play with the white and Hispanic and black kids too.
What it means is that if any white ancestors came over to Massachusetts or Virginia in the 1600s you are probably kin to millions of Americans. Even if your known white ancestors came over to Philadelphia and points south (New Castle, Baltimore, Annapolis, Jamestown, Charleston) you will be kin to a slew of Northerners because not all kin folks went to the same colonies and northerners interbred with people from the middle states like Maryland. How did I get to be a cousin to Paul Revere? Well, now I know. As Lois says, in the South if you are not kin you are connected. But expand that. If a bunch of your folks came in the 1600s you are kin, usually remotely, to everyone, the way I am kin to most of the men who died at the Alamo, not just to my Pottenger cousin Jim Bowie and my remoter cousins Travis and Crockett.
It all makes you see things more broadly.