My Last Name (not the Dierks Bentley song)

I don't know if you spent any time in a cemetery over the Memorial Day weekend.  For whatever reason, I always enjoy the trip...not out of some morbid curiosity, but seeing all the family names and wondering about their histories and stories behind the gravestones has always fascinated me.  (Yes, I fully understand that I am weird)  This was the first Memorial Day since my father passed away, so seeing the "Holliday" name on the gravestone brought to mind all of the things my wife discovered about our family through ancestry.com.

In case you didn't know (and probably still don't care), "Holliday" is my real name.  I'm not smart enough to use made-up names like some other radio personalities.  "Doc" is a nickname obviously (thank you for that Rich Cain from the 99Q days), but Jeff is the God-given first name.

I won't bore you with a ton of details, but what my wife found out about the "Holliday" name through ancestry was amazing.  There is a real good chance we are in the family tree of the famous gunfighter, John Henry "Doc" Holliday.  No real surprise there.  But, she also learned I am the fifth cousin of George W. Bush (yes, the President).  Another person we are apparently related to is John Wesley Hardin, quite possibly the meanest man ever to walk the earth.  (He once shot and killed a man for snoring during the wild west days)

My wife has yet to directly connect us to St. Louis Cardinal, Matt Holliday.  But, there is a real good chance we're related to him also.  Former President Ronald Reagan (and Nixon) is related to the Holliday family branch that we're on.

What have I learned from all this family history?  First of all, it's painfully obvious that I have been wading in the very shallow end of the Holliday family DNA pool when it comes to talent.  Second, I need to be contacting some prominent family members in Texas and Maine and asking to borrow money.  And, probably more important, I have a family that is much more interesting than me.

Oh...and we're from this tiny town in Scotland that I can't pronounce.

Have you ever traced your family history and, if so, what interesting stuff did you learn?