So far I haven't discovered any famous person in my tree so the most famous one must be my grandpa who was a principal in multiple schools in my hometown and helped to found them after WW2.
Not sure about ancestors, but Dwight Eisenhower is a very, very distant cousin.
It's probably way more common to have famous cousins than famous direct ancestors.
My grandfather was famous enough in his particular field of work, which probably makes him my most famous direct ancestor (though I have a feeling that my State officials ancestors would disagree on that).
But with cousins (by bloodline or married-into) you'll find quite a few famous names and connections to my tree.
Here's the only (in)famous ancestor in my tree (biological mother's side): John Billington, non-Pilgrim Mayflower settler and the first Englishman executed for murder in the Americas.
In reading a few things here and there, I'm sympathetic to the theory that he was railroaded by jealous and annoyed religious extremists in Plymouth Colony. Admittedly, I'm in a demographic that would find that version of events appealing. :-)
