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CELEBRITY GENEALOGY
Why Pharrell Almost Didn’t Exist
Every one of us is an amalgamation not only of all our ancestors, but of their decisions, and in 1831, Ambrose Hawkins was contemplating moving his family from America to Africa. Had he done so, his son Joseph would have been raised in Liberia instead of North Carolina and never would have become Pharrell Williams’s third great-grandfather.
As it happens, Ambrose did go to Liberia, but opted for a solo round trip, rather than a family migration. If not for this last minute change of plans, the gene pool that would eventually produce Pharrell couldn’t have crystallized. He wouldn’t exist and the rest of us would be considerably less Happy. All because one man changed his mind almost 190 years ago.
The Phenomenon of Pharrell
If you’re breathing, you know who Pharrell Williams is. Long a major player in the music and fashion industries, his public profile exploded several years ago when Happy became a worldwide sensation sending people from Poland to Cambodia into spasms of gleeful, unfettered, YouTube-shared dancing. He followed on the heels of this with four seasons on The Voice.
It didn’t take long to realize that Pharrell was the secret sauce behind countless hits and a multi-faceted entrepreneur and artist with business interests ranging from his Billionaire Boys Club clothing brand to jewelry, furniture, sculpture and furniture design partnerships with everyone from Louis Vuitton to Takashi Murakam. And, oh yeah, he hasn’t aged since 2003 and was once voted “Best Dressed Man in the World” by Esquire.
Pharrell’s Family Tree
A Virginia Beach native, the cultural icon has four children with his wife, Helen Lasichanh, but what about the family tree that produced him? I was curious, so decided to investigate.
Rarely have I researched a family that was so geographically concentrated. Generations of his forebears have called Virginia and North Carolina home. Virginia Beach and Norfolk feature prominently, as do Nash, Halifax, Johnston and Currituck counties in North Carolina. His tree is populated primarily by common surnames — Williams, Johnson, Allen, Edwards and Cooper among them — but also peppered with intriguing first names…
