Famous Descendants of Jean Guyon

An article on the famous descendants of Jean Guyon was posted on one of my genealogy sites. As I've discussed in previous posts, most French-Canadians have some shared ancestry, so it's no surprise that those of us descended from the LeFebvres (through the Cunninghams) are also descendants of Jean Guyon. He was, in fact, my 11xgreat-grandfather.

Jean Guyon was part of the Percheon Immigration, which came to New France in 1634 from the Perche region. He was very successful, with ten surviving children and (by some estimates) the second-largest number of descendants out of the early French settlers. According to Guyon's wikipedia page, 3/4 of old-line French-Canadians are descended from him. He (or his wife) were also the source of the mutation that caused Friedreich's ataxia in many generations of the family.

Some of his famous descendants include Celine Dion, Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall, and Madonna. Because of the on-going U.S. election, though, I was most interested to see Hillary Clinton on that list. In fact, while we share Guyon ancestry with Secretary Clinton, our relationship is closer. Clinton and I are 9th cousins once removed, through my 8xgreat-grandfather, Mathurin Gagnon.

Harvard Grads

Harvard's oldest surviving building, Massachusetts's Hall
(built long after John Bowers graduated)

While looking for something else, I came across Sibley's Harvard Graduates an 18-volume work detailing the lives all all the early graduates of Harvard University, from its inception (as Harvard College) in 1642. I was fascinated that someone took the time to do such a time-consuming and, frankly, rather useless piece of research, but of course I wanted to know if we had any Harvard grads among our ancestors.

The earliest close relative (although not direct ancestor) I could find was John Bowers, a graduate of Harvard's sixth class, in 1649 (Sibley 1873). He was the son of George and Barbara Bowers of Plymouth (later Cambridge) Massachusetts. After graduation, he moved to Connecticut to take up a parish there. Through the Kinney line, we are descended from George and Barbara Bowers through their daughter -- John's sister -- Ruth Bowers Knowles.

There were several clergymen in our Kinney ancestry, some of whom were likely Harvard graduates, but Sibley's second and third volumes are not readily available on-line, and with classes beginning, I don't have the time to search the other sixteen volumes!
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Sibley, John Langdon. 1873. Sibley's Harvard Graduates, I. Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes 1642-1658. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.