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I Spent My Labor Day Weekend Discovering That I’m Related to Princess Diana and Winston Churchill
The Spencer-Churchill family also has common ancestors with such iconic figures as Mary, Queen of Scots and Audrey Hepburn.
On a whim, I signed up for a free trial at Ancestry.com. I had some trepidation that I might find some branches of my family tree occupied by some of history’s scumbags. That fear was not unfounded, unfortunately, because I did find a few plantation owners from the former Confederacy.
However, when I got much farther back, into the sixteenth century, I found my tenth great-grandmother, Dame Mary Spencer (1588-1658). Her nephew (my first cousin eleven times removed) was Henry Spencer, the Earl of Sunderland (1620-1643, killed at the First Battle of Newbury). His son was Robert Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland and first Duke of Marlborough (1641-1702).
The third Earl of Sunderland and second Duke of Marlborough, Charles Spencer (1675-1722) and his wife, Lady Anne Spencer (1682-1716), whose maiden name was Churchill, were the seventh great grandparents of Lady Diana Spencer (1961-1997) and the fifth great grandparents of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), making the Princess of Wales (my eleventh cousin once removed) and the…
