GENEALOGY COMPANY REVEALS THAT ARTIST TAYLOR SWIFT IS RELATED TO EMILY DICKINSON

Since her early years, singer Taylor Swift has garnered recognition for her eloquent and captivating lyrics. It has now come to light that she is related to Emily Dickinson, another well-known American author. Ancestry, a genealogy company, has found that Dickinson and Swift are third-degree relatives or sixth cousins.

Ancestry told Today that, "both Swift and Dickinson are descended from an English immigrant who arrived in Windsor, Connecticut in the 17th century—Swift's 9th great-grandfather and Dickinson's 6th great-grandfather was an early settler." "Taylor Swift's ancestors settled in northwest Pennsylvania after a six-generation stay in Connecticut, where they eventually married into the Swift family line." 

Another intriguing connection between Swift and Dickinson has been discovered, which is not surprising given how extensively New England genealogy can be studied and recorded. Dickinson's ninth cousin five times removed, singer-songwriter James Taylor, is the inspiration behind the pop star's name.

However, Swift and Dickinson are more than just blood relatives; the singer has made references to the poet in the past. When Swift accepted the Nashville Songwriters Association International's Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award, she described one of her writing styles as "writing in the Quill genre," if her lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson's great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain.

Swift's body of work has even led some of her fans to draw parallels with Dickinson. Her ninth studio album, Evermore, was made available on the poet's birthday, December 10, 2020.

The creative relationship will soon become even closer. The Tortured Poets Department, Swift's eleventh studio album, will be out on April 19. And if anybody deserves a spot there, it's the writer who penned the lines, "The saddest noise, the sweetest noise, / The maddest noise that grows,— / The birds, they make it in the spring, / At night's delicious close," back in the 1800s.