Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson are distant relatives!
Pop sensation Taylor Swift has a surprising link to literary history—she's related to the famous 19th-century poet, Emily Dickinson! On Monday, Ancestry.com (a genealogy company) reported to NBC's Today that Swift and Dickinson share ancestry, tracing their roots back to a 17th-century English immigrant (Jonathan Gillette) who settled in Windsor, Connecticut. This ancestor is Swift's ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson's sixth great-grandfather, making the two personalities sixth cousins, three times removed.
Why does this story matter?
This family connection is timely, as Swift's upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department, is slated for release on April 19. Speaking of her long-dead, distant cousin, Dickinson, a luminary in American poetry, left an indelible mark despite only publishing a fraction of her extensive body of work during her lifetime—10 poems and one letter out of nearly 1,800 pieces. Themes of death, immortality, society, and spirituality danced through her verses.
Understanding family lineage and Swift's ancestors
Ancestry's research disclosed that Swift's family stayed in Connecticut for six generations before moving to north-western Pennsylvania and marrying into the Swift lineage. Interestingly, Swift has previously referenced the poet. In 2022, upon receiving the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International, she quipped, "If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson's great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that's me writing in the quill genre."
Swift's 'Evermore' album had this connection to Dickinson
Swifties, ever the keen detectives, had spotted a connection between Swift and Dickinson, during the release of the songstress's ninth studio album Evermore. The album was dropped on Dickinson's birthday—December 10. Swift is currently on the Asia leg of her wildly successful Eras tour.
Meanwhile, here's a glance at Swift's recent achievements
While fame eluded Dickinson throughout her lifetime, Swift has enjoyed massive success. In February, she won an unprecedented fourth Album of the Year Grammy—outshining legends like Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder. Her concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour raked in $261.6M globally and ranked as the 11th highest-grossing movie of 2023 in the US. TIME magazine crowned Swift as their 2023 Person of the Year, and she was a major highlight of the 2024 Super Bowl.
