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One unavoidable thing about dying is, you never know who’s going to come along later and become your cousin. Consider our cousins Frank & Jesse James and Sissy Spacek.

The Academy Awards weren’t invented yet when the outlaw brothers were alive. They wouldn’t have a clue about how important and celebrated you could be once you owned  a coveted gold plated statuette.

So Frank & Jesse James couldn’t possibly appreciate how cool it is be a cousin to Academy Award winning actress, Sissy Spacek.

Looking at it another way, no one can say just how Sissy Spacek might react if she knew she actually is a distant cousin to America’s iconic outlaws, Frank & Jesse James.

One thing is for sure. Sissy certainly would be stunned to learn that she has over 20,000 kinfolk that she shares with the outlaws and their James family. You can download her kinship report for free from Stray Leaves.

If this kind of serendipity tickles you, consider this. Sissy Spacek won her Academy Award for portraying Loretta Lynn in the film The Coal Miner’s Daughter. Loretta Lynn’s ancestral cabin home in Butcher Hollar is just a short distance from Waverly, Tennessee, where Jesse first buried his infant twin boys Gould & Montgomery James.

If we all could stick around a little bit longer, we all could be meeting some very interesting new cousins.