An American Author Challenge Discovery

This month's American Author Challenge is devoted to books by Louis L'Amour. For some reason I decided to look him up at Wikipedia, discovering his middle name is "Dearborn." Since Dearborn is one of my family lines, going back to New England, I immediately suspected we might be related.

Using his WikiTree profile I traced his line back to our common ancestors:

Louis Dearborn LaMoore/LaMour/L'Amour (1908-1988)
Emily Lavisa Dearborn (1870-1954)
Abraham Truman Dearborn (b. 1835)
William S. Dearborn (1803-abt 1852)
Levi Dearborn (1769-1857)
Reuben Dearborn (b. 1738)
Reuben Dearborn (1707-1790)
Samuel Dearborn (1676-1748)
Thomas Dearborn (1632-1710) and Hannah Colcord (1643-1720)

My line:
Lori Thornton (Me)
Dorothy Ann Lantz (1924-2010)
Irving Lee Lantz (1885-1971)
Laura Lucy Taylor (1854-1922)
Betsey Dearborn (1818-1899)
Nathan Dearborn (1785-1847)
Samuel Dearborn (1745-1833)
Benjamin Dearborn (b. 1713)
Ebenezer Dearborn (b. 1679)
Thomas Dearborn (ca 1634-1710) and Hannah Colcord (d. 1720)

I left the differences in dates in the WikiTree data and my own research, but it's similar enough one can tell it is the same person.

This makes us 7th cousins once removed.

Of course, I need to verify the information in WikiTree, and I'm not placing all the documentation for my own line in this post--and some of the older stuff probably needs some "shoring up."

However, the kinship to this month's author was an unexpected discovery for me I wished to share. I chose to read Westward the Tide, much of which is set in the Big Horn Mountains.