Does a love of words and storytelling run in your blood? As the news program “Today Show” reports, Taylor Swift (34) is related to a big name in literary history. The genealogy company Ancestry has discovered that the singer is related to the legendary American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886). According to the investigation, the two are sixth cousins.
“Swift and Dickinson are both descended from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift’s ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather, who was an early settler in Windsor, Connecticut),” Ancestry told the “Today Show.” “Taylor Swift’s ancestors lived in Connecticut for six generations until her part of the family eventually settled in northwestern Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swift family line.”
Did Taylor Swift have any idea of this family connection when she gave her acceptance speech at the Nashville Songwriters Association’s Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award in 2022? At the time she said: “If my lyrics sound like a letter that Emily Dickinson’s great-grandmother wrote while sewing a lace curtain, then I’m writing in the quill genre,” the pop star said at the time.
Fans are also speculating whether Swift’s ninth studio album, “Evermore,” was inspired by the 19th-century poet. The album was announced on December 10, 2020, Emily Dickinson’s birthday. In one of her poems entitled “One Sister Have I in Our House” the word “forevermore” appears, which sounds similar to the title of Swift’s album.
