Ancestry.com says singer and poet are sixth cousins, three times removed, both descended from a 17th-century English immigrant
Taylor Swift is related to the poet Emily Dickinson, according to Ancestry.com, who shared the news in an exclusive report with NBC’s Today.
On Monday, the genealogy company divulged that “Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift’s ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut)”.
Swift’s ancestors apparently “remained in Connecticut for six generations until her part of the family eventually settled in north-western Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swift family line”.
Dickinson and Swift are sixth cousins, three times removed. Dickinson, born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, is regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson lived as a recluse in her family’s home and only published anonymously while she was alive.
Notably, Swift has referenced the poet previously in public comments about her songwriting. In 2022, while accepting the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International, she said: “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.”
Fans have also long connected Swift’s ninth studio album, Evermore, to Dickinson, noting that her release date for the album – 10 December 2020 – was Dickinson’s birthday, among other lyrical connections to the poet’s prose.
The news of this relation is apt given Swift’s upcoming album due for release in April is entitled The Tortured Poets Department. While Swift is currently on the Asia leg of her wildly successful Eras tour, she divulged during a February performance in Australia that writing her new album over the last two years reminded her “why songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life”.
Sign up to Swift Notes
A weekly comprehensive email on all things Taylor Swift
after newsletter promotion
“I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets,” she told fans.
