Could John F. Kennedy be your 10th cousin, 10 times removed?

Is Judy Garland in your family tree?

Bob Hope?

Booker T. Washington?

Well, they are all in mine, according to a new Ancestry.com feature that allows those with family trees on the site to find famous relatives.

Wanna know who else shakes down out of the Haynes family tree?

Mamie Eisenhower. She's an eighth cousin, three times removed.

How do I connect to Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Let me count the ways.

She's a ninth cousin, nine times removed.

But there's no removal between Mr. Hope and me. We're 13th cousins.

"Once you go back several hundred years in America, there's a good chance you're going to have some famous people in your family," said Megan Smolenyak, the chief family historian for Ancestry.com.

Basically, what Ancestry.com does is look at the people in its family tree database and determine where there's a common link.

For example, the link between me and all these famous people runs through my great-great-grandfather William H. Haines.

My own research shows he's my g-g-grandfather. But it's the next generation back that needs further investigation.

According to Ancestry.com, William H. Haines' father was a man named Henry Richardson Amos.

He was married to a woman named Mary Streett. It is the Amos and Streett branches that bear all the famous folks.

That puts me in good keeping with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, whose roots on his mother's side go back very far in America, Ms. Smolenyak said.

"So he's got a lot of famous relatives, but the majority stem from just a couple of branches from his tree," she said.

As for the site's famous-relative finder, Ms. Smolenyak said there is the possibility of a false positive.

That ancestor who connects you to the famous relative might not be your ancestor at all. It could just be someone who has the same name, birthdate and birthplace as your true ancestor.

"It's a new tool, so I want to play with it more to make sure it's fairly foolproof," Ms. Smolenyak said. "I wouldn't take it as absolute fact just yet," she said of my newfound famous relatives.

Sigh!

I sure was looking forward to summers at the family compound in Hyannisport.