DNA, the tiny library of life, has confirmed that all humans are related to each other anyway, but some have more interesting recent relatives than others.
We took our daughter of the revolution to the birthplace of one of the many people who makes up that American DNA.
To our surprise, the ancestor was from a hamlet less than a mile away from the home of Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother.
At the time of old Will, these villages were small places, hence hamlets, with a handful of farms each.
They knew each other.
Were they really related? We don't know. For all we know, Will Shakespeare's grain hoarding might have hit our relative hard and constitute the reason why the latter got the hell out.
We made our typically American pilgrimage to the ancestral hamlet, took a picture of the farm that bears the name to this day, then walked over to the Mary Arden trust, a farming complex with people dressed up Tudor style.
Mary Arden's (Will's mom) farm was actually the small place next to what was previously believed to be her farm. It all came to light around the year 2000 when the trust bought up the smaller adjacent property - not because anybody thought it was worth having but to prevent a developer from putting up brand new apartments on the lot.
The expert hired to show once and for all that the little house had no historical value was stunned to discover it had been the real Mary Arden's farm. The "official" previous one belonged to a more wealthy neighbor of the Shakespeares.
We bid farewell to Uncle Will I Was after a visit to old Stratford-upon-Avon.
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