Walt Disney Family Tree

hi this is Matt Baker this coming Monday October the 16th will Mark exactly 100 years since the founding of the Walt Disney Company now one of the world's largest media conglomerates and a brand that virtually everyone on the planet is familiar with the company of course gets its name from this man here who founded it together with his brother Roy Disney back in 1923 therefore I thought that this week would be a good week to go through some Disney history including a look at their family tree no

w the first thing you need to know is that the name Disney comes from the word the is which is French meaning from is a reference to the French town of is s or is on the sea this small town is located in the part of France known as Normandy however in 1066 under the leadership of William the Conqueror many Normans came to settle in England including Disney's Direct Mail line ancestor because that ancestor had originally been from is Sur he used the surname de is but eventually this became anglic

ized as Disney the Disneys went on to become the Lords of the Manor in several small English Villages including one that to this day is called Norton Disney it was presumably from one of these earlier aristocratic Disneys that Walt Disney's great great great grandfather Robert Disney was descended he was born in England but later moved to Ireland where the next two generations of the family were born however in 1834 Walt's great-grandfather Arendelle immigrated to Ontario in what is now Canada t

hat's where Walt's grandfather keble grew up and where his father Elias was born so does this mean that the Disney family is actually Canadian or are they Irish or English or perhaps even of French descent well I guess the answer is kind of all of the above and of course they are also American that's because kepal Disney moved to Kansas in 1878 along with his wife Mary and their eight children the eldest of whom was Elias now aged 19 Elias initially worked on his dad's Farm but also tried his ha

nd at many other jobs including working in a railroad machine shop where one of his co-workers happened to be Walter Chrysler the man who went on to found the Chrysler car company a bit later he ended up in Florida where he married Flora call and then in Chicago which is where Walt was born Walt Disney's mother's side of the family has much deeper roots in the US for example through his maternal grandfather Walt is a descendant of John Billington one of the passengers on the Mayflower and he's a

descendant of the Reverend George borrow the only church minister to be executed during the infamous Salem Witch Trials finally through this side of the family he's also the third cousin three times removed of Samuel Morse the inventor of Morse code now before we go any further I want to tell you how you can build a tree like this for your own family using the website of today's sponsor my herit AG it's actually quite easy just sign up for a free trial and then add as many relatives as you can

using their easy to use Family Tree Maker from there my Heritage will give you Discovery links which will help you grow your tree even further you can also search their database of over 19 billion records which include birth certificates military records newspaper articles and more for example using my Heritage I was able to find this article about Walt Disney's mother from the Boston Sunday post dated November 27th 1938 it tells the sad story of how she died at age 71 when gas fumes from a leak

y furnace seeped into her home Walt Disney's father survived that incident but died 3 years later in 1941 according to my Heritage both of them are now buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale if you want to learn the history of of your own ancestors my Heritage is offering useful charts viewers a 14-day free trial followed by 50% off a premium membership you can sign up right now by going to the link in the description or pinned comment let's now return to the Disney Family Tree like I sa

y Walt himself was born in Chicago although the family moved around quite a bit during his childhood for example he spent several years on a f in Missouri as well as in can city which is where he met OB iWorks one of his early collaborators together they created laog studio in 1921 however when that company went bankrupt in 1923 they moved to Hollywood and together with Walt's brother Roy founded Disney Brothers Studio exactly 100 years ago although it soon became known as Walt Disney Studio but

don't be confused by the name although the company was named after Walt and it was Walt who was the creative genius Roy Disney played a major role as well taking care of the business side of things all the way up to 1971 now although the Walt Disney Company was established in 1923 it wasn't until the 1930s and 40s that it really took off thanks in part to the creation of this little guy here Mickey Mouse although not an official part of the family tree because he's so so integral to the Disney

brand I thought I'd tell you a bit about his birth the story actually starts with an earlier character here named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit who was created by Walt Disney and OB ey Works in 1927 there was a problem though they created Oswald for Universal Pictures and hence Universal Pictures ended up owning the rights to him therefore in 1928 Walt and OB came up with a replacement character instead one that Disney would own the very similar looking Mickey Mouse originally he was going to be calle

d Mortimer Mouse but then Walt's wife Lillian convinced him to change the name to Mickey speaking of Lillian she was actually one of Disney studios's first employees hired as an ink and paint artist but soon a romance developed between her and Walt and they married in 1925 she continued to work as an artist during those early years and in fact was one of the artists who worked on the very first Mickey Mouse film called plain crazy in 1928 a lot of people think that Steamboat Willie was the first

Mickey Mouse film because it was the first one to be distributed on a large scale but plain crazy was actually made a bit earlier and used for a test screening anyway together Walt and lilan had two children both daughters their firstborn Diane was their biological child whereas the their second born Sharon was adopted both girls appeared in Disney's first ever TV special called 1 hour in Wonderland which aired on Christmas day in 1950 but by this point the Disney brand was already Super Famous

you see it was between 1937 and 1942 that Disney experienced its golden age with the release of its first fulllength animated films Snow White Pinocchio and Fantasia all of which which broke new ground in terms of animation and film technology but then the US entered World War II and the Disney Studio was actually used to produce propaganda films for the state department such as this one called D fur's face starring Donald Duck it wasn't until 1950 that Disney hit its stride again with films su

ch as Cinderella aliceon Wonderland and Peter Pan then in 1955 Disneyland opened in an California the TV series now known as The Wonderful World of Disney started the year before and was initially designed specifically to advertise the new theme park now before I move on with the company's history I want to point out a few people on the family tree I mentioned earlier that Walt's father Elias had seven siblings one of these was his younger brother Robert Disney he's important to the overall stor

y because it was Uncle Robert Who provided the the initial seed money for Roy and Walt to start the Disney Studio Roy and Walt also had two older brothers Herbert and Raymond Herbert worked for the US Postal Service and Raymond ran an insurance company which became successful in part because he provided the insurance for all the Disney employees in the early days of the company they also had a younger sister named Ruth who lived a very private life the last movie that Walt Disney himself was inv

olved with was the Jungle Book which was released one year after his death in 1966 from lung cancer however what dominated Walt Disney's final years were the plans for an even bigger theme park this time in Florida where he managed to acquire a whopping 25,000 acres of land with the help of real estate developer Bill Lund who later became the second husband of Walt's daughter Sharon Disney however the more important son-in-law of Walt Disney was Ron Miller who was married to Diane Disney and who

worked as a producer for the company after Walt Disney died in 1966 his brother Roy continued to run things until his death in 1971 after which Don Tatum took over as CEO and then card Walker but then in 1983 the job of CEO once again fell to a family member with Ron Miller taking the top job his main contrib ution was the creation of Touchstone pictures which allowed Disney to create non G-rated movies for the first time such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit Dead Poet Society and Armageddon but Ron

Miller did not last long at the top job in 1984 there were several hostile takeover attempts aimed at splitting the company into Parts at this point Roy Disney's son Roy Jr also known as Roy E Disney stepped in and and prevented this from happening he managed to oust Ron Miller and make Michael Eisner the CEO instead meanwhile Roy E Disney put himself in charge of the animation studio What followed is what's been called the Disney Renaissance which is when Disney produced films such as The Littl

e Mermaid Aladdin and the Lion King by this point Disney was finally considered to be one of the major film studios in America alongside companies such as Universal Pictures Paramount and Warner Brothers in 1995 Disney also acquired ABC one of the big three TV networks in the US meaning that it was now a major player in both film and television 1995 was also the year that Toy Story came out which was the first fulllength movie to be 100% computer animated it was produced via a partnership betwee

n Disney and a company called Pixar owned by Steve JN jobs of Apple Fame around 10 years later Disney bought Pixar outright soon after Michael Eisner was replaced by Bob Iger who is the current CEO during iger's tenure Disney has continued to grow acquiring other major brands such as Marvel Star Wars and most recently 21st Century Fox in 2019 it launched Disney plus which is currently the third largest streaming platform worldwide after Netflix and Amazon nowadays there are no longer any Disney

family members serving as Executives at Disney the last family member to hold any sway was Roy E Disney who passed away in 2009 he and his wife Patricia had four children Roy Susan Abigail and Tim all of whom are independent film producers Abigail is the most outspoken of the four known for publicly criticizing both Walt Disney himself as well as the current direction of the company Ron Miller and Diane Disney had seven children their son Walter appeared in the Disney movie Son of Flubber when h

e was just a baby these days he's the president of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco Sharon Disney had three children with her first husband she adopted Victoria who sadly became a heroin addict and died at age 36 with her second husband she had a of twins Brad and Michelle Brad who has an intellectual disability has unfortunately been fighting for years to receive his inheritance you see trust funds were set up for all three of Sharon's children with certain trustees being given th

e power to withhold the 100 plus millionar owed to each of them if they felt that the recipients were not responsible enough to manage the money Victoria was given her inheritance despite her drug addiction whereas Brad was not despite him demonstrating responsibility by working several everyday jobs one of his main supporters is his stepmother Sheri Lund okay so that was a look at the family tree of Walt Disney let me know in the comments what you think of this influential family and Company th

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