What do pop queen Madonna, Canadian singer Celine Dion, and the new Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker-Bowles, have in common? They are all related.
Camilla and Madonna are both descended from Zacharie Cloutier (1617-1708), while Camilla and Celine descend from Jean Guyon (1619-1694) - both of whom died in Chateau-Richer, Quebec.
You can see those relationships on William Addams Reitwiesner's web pages at: http://www.wargs.com/royal/camilla.html. The top two-thirds of the page shows the Duchess of Cornwall's ancestry. The connections of Madonna (real name: Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) and Celine Dion are shown nearer the bottom of the page.
You can also view Madonna's ancestry on Genealogy.com's Web site. In fact, you can even download a GEDCOM file from that site to your hard drive and then import that data directly into your Windows or Macintosh genealogy program. That certainly saves a lot of manual typing! Look at http://www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/madonna/index.html for details.
NOTE: All of the information presented on the Web pages mentioned is offered on an "as is" basis. Accuracy of the information is not guaranteed by anyone. As with any genealogy information, it is up to you to verify the accuracy of the data by independent means.
By the way, the writer of this newsletter is also descended from both Zacharie Cloutier and Jean Guyon, sieur du (Lord of) Buisson. In fact, almost everyone with French-Canadian ancestry can find these two men in their family trees as well. If you can find these two men in your family tree, you, too, are a distant cousin of Madonna, Celine Dion, and Camilla Parker-Bowles.
