Taylor Swift is Related to Emily Dickinson

The genealogy company Ancestry revealed on TODAY that Taylor Swift is related to the poet Emily Dickinson: “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),” making them sixth cousins, three times removed.

Swift has compared her lyrics to Dickinson before. While discussing her categories of lyrics — Quill Lyrics, Fountain Pen Lyrics, and Glitter Pen Lyrics — 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.”