The Eras tour superstar has a famous relative from another era.
According to a report, Taylor Swift, 34, can now boast an illustrious ancestor — Emily Dickinson.
The “Shake It Off” singer and the 19th-century American poet are sixth cousins three times removed, genealogy company Ancestry told “Today.”
Singer Taylor Swift is a distant cousin of poet Emily Dickinson. James Gourley/Shutterstock “Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift’s 9th great-grandfather and Dickinson’s 6th great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut),” Ancestry said.
“Taylor Swift’s ancestors remained in Connecticut for six generations until her part of the family eventually settled in northwestern Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swift family line.”
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Dickinson, who died in 1886, penned nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime. With 221 songs, written and co-written, under her belt as of Nov. 2023, Swift is catching up.
The timing of the family revelation couldn’t be better. Swift’s latest album, out April 19, is titled “The Tortured Poets Department.”
The singer has actually referenced her long-lost cousin before.
“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,” she said during an acceptance speech to Nashville Songwriters Association International.
The similarities end there, though. Dickinson wasn’t at all well-known in her own time, but that couldn’t be less true of Swift.
Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime. So far, Swift has written or co-written 221. Getty Images In February, the singer took home a record fourth album of the year Grammy Award — besting Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder.
Her concert-film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” grossed $261.6 million worldwide and was the 11th highest grossing movie of 2023 domestically.
She was named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year.
And Swift was a prime focus of the 2024 Super Bowl, where she watched her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his team the Kansas City Chiefs win for the second year in a row.
