J.K. Rowling’s genealogy has generated quite a bit of interest in the press. This article mentions a twist though, that Rowling is contacting historians in Hawaii about her possible ancestry. Normally, when your as rich and famous as she is and your past is muddled, you probably have more than a few amateur sleuths, err genealogists trying to figure out if your somehow related, and if so, can you perhaps be invited to a few of her parties. This is part of the “I’m related to royalty” syndrome, although it’s 2005 and royalty is out and celebrities like this are in.
Chris Cook, in The Garden Island (KAUAI News – Hawaii) wrote:
The link is a Kaua‘i doctor of the Victorian era who may be Rowling’s maternal great-grandfather. The doctor’s name is Dugald Campbell, a Scottish physician who came to Kilauea Plantation in January 1885 to serve as a plantation physician, according to a genealogy Web page on the www.ntlworld.com Web site out of Great Britain. Campbell studied at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities before coming to Kaua‘i.
Kilauea Plantation was British-owned in the 1880s and attracted a number of English and Scottish managers and engineers to the North Shore.
It’d be great to have her kind of resources to research your family’s past, but on the flip side – you would never get anything done. Just think about J.K. Rowling walking into a library or research center somewhere – the place would go nuts and the line for autographs would quickly form (meanwhile people are phoning their friends, which will just make it worse within an hour).