Alexandra Feodorovna

Simone Biles Family Tree - Parents, Siblings and Husband

The Biles family is the family of Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, raised in Spring, Texas, by her adoptive parents Ron and Nellie Biles. She is married to NFL safety Jonathan Owens. ## Origins Simone Biles was born in Columbus, Ohio, on 14 March 1997. When she was a young child, her maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, and his wife, Nellie Cayetano Biles, took Simone and her younger sister Adria into their home near Houston, and in 2003 they formally adopted both girls. Simone has always called them Mom and Dad. Her two older biological siblings, Ashley and Tevin, were raised by a great-aunt in Cleveland. Nellie brought a second family line into the story. She was born in Belize City, the daughter of Silas Cayetano, a teacher who became a senator in Belize, and she moved to Texas at 18 to study nursing. Through her, Simone is celebrated in Belize as one of the country's own. ## Notable members - **Simone Biles**, 11-time Olympic medallist (7 gold) and 30-time World Championship medallist (23 gold), with five skills named after her. - **Ron Biles**, Air Force veteran and retired air traffic controller, Simone's grandfather and adoptive father. - **Nellie Biles**, nurse turned businesswoman who co-owned nursing homes across Texas and, with Ron, bought the gym now known as World Champions Centre. - **Silas Cayetano**, Belizean educator and senator, Nellie's father. - **Jonathan Owens**, NFL safety who married Simone in April 2023. ## Significance The Biles story is often told as a story about adoption: a grandfather and his wife who became parents again, then built a training centre around a daughter's talent. World Champions Centre in Spring, Texas, bought by Ron and Nellie in 2014, is where Simone trains, and the family's businesses and her career have grown up together. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Family home | Spring, Texas, United States | | Best-known member | Simone Biles, artistic gymnast | | Adoption | Simone and Adria adopted by Ron and Nellie Biles in 2003 | | Family gym | World Champions Centre, Spring, Texas (purchased 2014) | | Belizean roots | Through Nellie Biles, daughter of senator Silas Cayetano | | Simone's marriage | Jonathan Owens, 22 April 2023 |

The Jackson Family Tree - Michael Jackson

Mahatma Gandhi Family Tree - The Gandhi Lineage

The Gandhi family is the direct biological lineage of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), the Indian independence leader known as Mahatma Gandhi, tracing his descendants through his wife Kasturba Gandhi and their four sons down to his great-grandchildren active in India, South Africa and beyond. This family is entirely distinct from the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, whose surname comes from Indira Gandhi's husband Feroze Gandhy and shares no blood relation with Mahatma Gandhi at all. ## Origins The family's roots lie in Porbandar, in the Kathiawar region of present-day Gujarat, where Mohandas Gandhi was born to Karamchand Gandhi, diwan (chief minister) of the princely state, and his wife Putlibai. Gandhi married Kasturba Makhanji Kapadia in 1883, and the couple's shared life, spanning his legal training in London, two decades of activism in South Africa, and his return to lead India's independence movement, produced four sons: Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas. Each son's branch of the family took a markedly different path, from journalism and diplomacy to activism against apartheid, while remaining bound by their shared descent from Mohandas and Kasturba. ## Notable members Manilal Gandhi carried his father's work to South Africa, editing the newspaper Indian Opinion for decades; his children Arun Gandhi and Ela Gandhi became, respectively, an internationally known peace educator and an anti-apartheid Member of the South African Parliament. Devdas Gandhi became a leading Indian journalist as editor of the Hindustan Times, and his four children with Lakshmi Gandhi, Rajmohan, Ramchandra, Gopalkrishna and Tara, went on to prominence as a historian, a philosopher, a diplomat-turned-Governor of West Bengal, and a writer. The family's fourth generation includes Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson through eldest son Harilal's line, known for his writing on his great-grandfather's life and legacy. ## Significance Across four generations, the Gandhi family has remained closely tied to the causes Mohandas Gandhi championed: nonviolent resistance, civil rights, journalism in service of public life, and constructive social work, carried forward in India, South Africa and internationally rather than concentrated in any single institution or country. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Patriarch | Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) | | Native place | Porbandar, Gujarat, India | | Spouse | Kasturba Gandhi (1869-1944) | | Sons | Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas, Devdas | | Generations covered | 4 (parents to great-grandchildren) | | Members in this tree | 21 | | Distinct from | The Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty |

Habsburg Family Tree - The House of Habsburg

The House of Habsburg was one of the most powerful royal dynasties in European history, ruling Austria from 1282, supplying almost every Holy Roman Emperor between 1438 and the empire's dissolution in 1806, and reigning over Spain and its overseas empire from 1516 to 1700. Named for a castle in what is now Switzerland, the family rose from modest Swabian counts to sovereigns of lands stretching from the Danube to the Andes, and its senior line ended only in 1918 with the fall of Austria-Hungary. ## Origins The dynasty takes its name from Habsburg Castle in the Aargau, in present-day Switzerland, held by a family of counts with scattered lands in Swabia and Alsace. Its fortunes changed in 1273, when the prince-electors chose Rudolf I as King of the Romans after a long interregnum. Rudolf defeated Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1278, took the duchies of Austria and Styria, and granted them to his sons, moving the family's centre of gravity permanently to Vienna. Two centuries later the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy, and of their son Philip the Handsome to Joanna of Castile, converted a regional Alpine power into a continental one within a single generation. ## Notable members Charles V inherited Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Naples and the Spanish Americas, and on his abdication in 1556 divided them: Spain and the Low Countries to his son Philip II, the Austrian lands and the imperial title to his brother Ferdinand I. The Spanish branch ran from Philip II through Philip III and Philip IV to Charles II, whose death in 1700 without an heir set off the War of the Spanish Succession. The Austrian branch ran from Ferdinand I through Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III to Charles VI, whose daughter Maria Theresa became the only woman to rule the Habsburg lands in her own right. Her marriage to Francis I Stephen of Lorraine founded the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, which produced Joseph II, Leopold II, Marie Antoinette, Francis II, and the long-reigning Franz Joseph I. ## Significance For six centuries the Habsburgs shaped the map of Europe less by conquest than by marriage, holding together a multilingual realm of Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Croats and others under a single crown. They led the Counter-Reformation, halted Ottoman expansion at Vienna in 1683, and gave Europe both the Thirty Years' War and the Congress system that followed Napoleon. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 triggered the First World War, and the abdication of Charles I in 1918 ended Habsburg rule. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder of the royal line | Rudolf I of Habsburg, King of the Romans from 1273 | | Family seat | Habsburg Castle, Aargau; later Vienna, Graz and Madrid | | Height of power | Charles V (1500 to 1558), ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Naples and Spanish America | | Spanish line | Philip II to Charles II, 1556 to 1700 | | Austrian line | Ferdinand I to Charles VI, 1521 to 1740 | | Habsburg-Lorraine | From Maria Theresa and Francis I Stephen, 1736 onward | | Last reigning monarch | Charles I of Austria, who left government in 1918 | | Principal titles | Holy Roman Emperor, Emperor of Austria, King of Spain, Hungary and Bohemia |