By Tomás Mier
Looks like Taylor Swift‘s lyricism might be hereditary!
On Monday, the genealogy company Ancestry revealed that it found historical documents that connect Swift’s family tree to American poet Emily Dickinson. Swift and Dickinson are sixth cousins, three times removed.
According to Ancestry, both Swift and Dickinson descend from a 17th-century English immigrant — Swift’s ninth great-grandfather, Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather — who settled in Windsor, Connecticut.
Swift’s ancestors stayed in Connecticut for six generations until part of her family line moved to Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swifts, according to Ancestry.
“The remarkable connection between Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson is just one example of the incredible things you can discover when you explore your past,” Jennifer Utley, Director of Research at Ancestry, said in a statement. “Even if we don’t know it, our pasts can influence our present – and how fun to see all the uncanny similarities between the pair.”
Swift has referenced Dickinson before when describing her writing styles — quill lyrics, pen lyrics, and glitter gel pen lyrics — at the 2022 Nashville Songwriters Association International’s annual awards show.
“I categorize certain songs of mine in the ‘Quill’ style if the words and phrasings are antiquated if I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or after watching a movie where everyone is wearing poet shirts and corsets,” she said at the time. “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.”
It’s fitting timing for the family line revelation since Swift is preparing to release her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19. Dickinson surely would’ve been a member.
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