Emma Stone Family History

Emily Jean Stone, better known as the actress Emma Stone, was born on November 6th, 1988 to Jeffrey and Krista Stone in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The family was relatively well off.  Emma’s father ran a building contracting company and they lived comfortably by the Camelback Resort and Golf Club in Scottsdale, of which her parents were part owners.

But Emma was an anxious child, sometimes subject to panic attacks.  She started therapy when she was seven years old, and that, combined with doing improvisation and acting, proved to be helpful for her.

She acted in a theater production of The Wind in the Willows when she was twelve.  She was by that time attending an all-girls Catholic high school in Phoenix.  In 2003, when she was fifteen, having got the acting bug, she dropped out of school and moved to Hollywood.  Emma has said in interviews that she managed to persuade her parents to make this move through a Powerpoint presentation.

As it turned out, her mother went with her to Los Angeles in 2004 and signed an initial six month lease at the Park La Brea for both of them so that Emma could pursue an acting career full-time.

Mother and daughter have remained close.  Mother was in fact diagnosed with breast cancer, but was cured in 2008. They celebrated by getting tattoos of birds’ feet designed by Paul McCartney, a reference to the Beatles song Blackbird which they both loved.

Emma’s acting dream in Hollywood happened, but it took a long time to materialize.  It was not until 2010 that she began to get noticed after a starring role in the teen comedy Easy A.

Her breakthrough film was the musical comedy La La Land in 2016.  Her performance there won her the first of her Academy Best Actress Awards.  One critic described her in the film as follows: “Emma Stone has never been better: superbly smart, witty, vulnerable, her huge doe eyes radiating intelligence even  or especially so when they are filling with tears.”

Emma’s subsequent choice of films has divided between some high-profile mainstream productions and other more quirky low-budget films.  The film Poor Things probably came in the latter category, but it gave her her second Academy Best Actress Award in 2024.

In her private life, she married Dave McCary, a New York TV director at Saturday Night Live, in 2020 and now divides her time between Los Angeles and New York.

Emma’s Ancestry

This is what Emma herself had to say about her family ancestry.

“My Mom’s side came from the US East Coast.  My Dad’s side is Swedish.  When they came through Ellis Island, they changed their name from Sten to Stone.  My grandfather is 100% Swedish, but we’re from Dutch Pennsylvania.  So my mother used to take us to our ancestors’ tombstones to do grave rubbing.  She would talk about it all the time and get into some weird family secret stuff.”

She has Swedish ancestry on her father’s side and German ancestry on her mother’s.  But in both cases the starting point in America was Pennsylvania.

Her Swedish Side

Emma’s Swedish ancestors on her father’s side have been traced back to Alvsborg near Gothenburg in the area of SW Sweden now known as Vastergotland.

The forebear of this family appeared as Bengt Storm, according to his marriage record of 1816.  However, the last name changed for some reason to Sten (the Swedish for “stone”) with the birth of his son Bengt Carl Sten in 1827.  It was this Bengt Carl who emigrated to America with his family in 1877.  More understandably, he became B.C. Stone on his arrival at Ellis Island as he adopted an American nomenclature.

B.C. Stone was already fifty years old when he made the trip across the Atlantic.  He lasted another eighteen years, dying in 1895 at McKeesport near Pittsburgh in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania.  He and his wife Anna had five daughters and just one son.  This son – Charles John Stone, born in Sweden in 1866 – worked as a clothing salesman and then as a tailor until well into his eighties.  He lived on in McKeesport until 1957.

The Stone line from Charles John Stone ran as follows:

• Conrad Stone Sr. (1897-1966), born in McKeesport and moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1942 where he later died.
• Conrad Stone Jr. (1930-2021), born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, worked in Arlington, Ohio and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in 1989 where he later died.
• and Jeffrey Stone, Emma’s father (b. 1960), born in Arlington, Ohio and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in 1986.

These Stones appear to have been doing better with each generation:

• Conrad Sr. was a physicist by training who was interested in glass-making technology and worked for the Federal Glass Company in Columbus, Ohio.
• Conrad Jr. or Connie received a business education at Ohio State and worked for the Edward Companies in housing construction in Arlington, Ohio.  In later life he accepted an offer from his son Jeff to become CFO of his contracting company in Arizona.
• while Jeff Stone graduated with a business degree at Miami University in 1982 and started his own building contracting company Summit Builders in 1986 in Phoenix, Arizona.  In 2014 he co-founded a new real estate development company in Phoenix named Hyphen Development.

Her German Side 

On Emma’s mother’s side were German Yeager ancestors who were in Pennsylvania well before her Swedish Stones arrived.  The twins Henry and John Yeager, born in Pennsylvania in 1844, were old enough to enlist in the Union army at the onset of the Civil War.  Both survived and afterwards returned to Reading, Berks county.

Their younger brother George – the ancestor of Emma’s mother Krista – was too young to fight in the Civil War,  After the war he too settled in Reading.  The Yeager line in Reading from George then went as follows:

• Sylvester Irvin Yeager (1877-1934) married to Mamie Burke (1880-1955)
• Irvin Sylvester Yeager (1900-1953) married to Esther Parks (1907-1977)
• and Donald Yeager, Krista’s father (1932-1982) married to Jean Louise Eiseman (b. 1934)

A more famous resident of Reading has been the singer/songwriter Taylor Swift, a great friend of Emma Stone.  But it was not because of the Reading connection.  Instead, according to Emma, they had first met in Los Angeles at the Young Hollywood Award in 2006.

Donald Yeager had been born in Reading, but lived out his life in Wilmington, Delaware where he had been a marketing rep for IBM.  His wife Jean Louise, Emma’s maternal grandmother, survived his death in 1982 and has lived on to the age of ninety.  She has been remembered in the family with Emma’s second name being Jean and Emma naming her own daughter Louise Jean.

Emma’s mother Krista had talked about strange things in her family tree.  The one slightly scandalous thing that has been uncovered has been in her mother’s Eiseman/Henry family line.

This concerned Jean’s maternal grandparents Jackson and Lydia Henry.  They had married in 1899 and their daughter Ruth, Jean’s mother, had been born in 1908.  However, some time afterwards Jackson, a heavy drinker, went off the rails and abandoned his family.  In 1915 he was arrested for sending threatening letters to his wife.  Finally in 1923 Lydia could take no more and filed for divorce.

Emma Stone’s Family Tree

• Her Paternal Stone Line

• Bengt Carl Sten aka B.C. Stone (1827-1895) m. Anna Petterdotter (1824-1894) in Sweden
• – Johanna Sten/Stone (1850-1922)
• – Anna Sten/Stone (1859-1932) m. John Dahl
• – Augusta Sten/Stone (1861-1928) m. John Friberg
• – Benedikta Sten/Stone (1864-1932) m. Johannes Johnson
• – Carl Johan Sten/Stone (1866-1957)
• – Louisa Sten/Stone (1869-1940)

• Carl Johan Sten aka Charles John Stone arrived from Sweden in 1887 and m. Hilma Bengston (1869-1901), also from Sweden, in Pennsylvania in 1892
• – Edith Stone (1893-1983)
• – Rudolph Stone (1895-1970) m. Julia Johnson
• – Conrad Stone (1897-1966)
• – Theresia Bennett nee Stone (1899-1977)
• – Martha Shug nee Stone (1901-1980)

• Conrad August Stone from McKeesport, Pennsylvania m. Florence Ostberg (1901-1999) of Swedish parents from Cleveland, Ohio in 1927
• – Hannah Carson (b. 1925), half sister
• – Patricia Stone (1928-2010) m. Anthony Jenkins
• – Conrad Stone (1930-2021)

• Conrad (Connie) Ostberg Stone from Charleroi, Pennsylvania m. Margaret Moran (1924-1960) in Ohio in 1956; rem. Marilyn Given in Ohio in 1961
• – Jeffrey Stone (b. 1960)
• – plus daughter Kim and son Michael

• Jeffrey (Jeff) Stone from Arlington, Ohio m. Kristina (Krista) Yeager (b. 1960) and moved to Arizona in 1986.  They later divorced.
• – Emily Jean (Emma) Stone (b. 1988)
• – Spencer Stone (b. 1990)

• Emma Stone m. David (Dave) McCary (b. 1985) in 2020
• – Louise Jean McCary (b. 2021)

• Her Maternal Yeager/Eiseman Lines

• Yeager Line
• Henry Yeager (1819-1896) from Pennsylvania m. Salome Lebo (1819-1887)
• – Henry Yeager (1844-1889), twin, Civil War veteran
• – John Yeager (1844-1908), twin, Civil War veteran, m. Maria Lebo
• – George Yeager (1848-1892)
• – James Yeager (1850-1907)

• George Washington Yeager from Pennsylvania m. Lovina Noll (1851-1911) around 1870
• – Harvey Yeager (1872-1919) m. Mamie Miller
• – Charles Yeager (1874-1930) m. Katie Rapp
• – Teresa Yeager (1875-1933) m. Nils Nilson
• – Sylvester Yeager (1877-1934)
• – Sallie Yeager (1880-1940) m. Harry Meintzer
• – Ellen (Ella) Yeager (1882-1929) m. John Schlegel
• – Lottie Yeager (1885-1913)
• – Elsie Yeager (1887-1944)

• Sylvester Irvin Yeager from Reading, Pennsylvania m. Mary (Mamie) Burke (1880-1955)
• – Irvin Yeager (1900-1953)

• Irvin Sylvester Yeager from Reading, Pennsylvania m. Esther Parks (1907-1977)
• – Donald Yeager (1932-1982)
• – Claire Yeager (1934-1982) m. Theodore Zalenski

• Donald (Don) Yeager from Reading, Pennsylvania m. Jean Louise Eiseman (b. 1934)
• – Mark Yeager (b. late 1950’s)
• – Kristina (Krista) Yeager (b. 1960) m. Jeff Stone (b. 1960), later divorced
• – plus another daughter Karin Yeager

• Eiseman Line
• Cyrus Eiseman (1854-1891) from Lebanon, Pennsylvania m. Susan Noll (1857-1932) around 1875
• – Adam Eiseman (1876-1958)
• – Estella Eiseman (1878-1953)
• – Robert Eiseman (b. 1882)

• Robert Eiseman from Berks county, Pennsylvania m. Esther Hoffman (b. 1890) in 1906
• – Cyrus Eiseman (1906-2000)

• Cyrus Eiseman from Berks county, Pennsylvania m. Ruth Henry (1908-1983) from Chester county, Pennsylvania in 1932
• – Jean Louise Eiseman (b. 1934) m. Donald (Don) Yeager (1932-1982) and then rem. Robert Morgan (died in 2019)
• – Janet Eiseman (1941-1985)