By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer – Wed Oct 13, 12:56 am ET
NEW YORK – President Barack Obama has family ties to none other than Sarah Palin, according to the genealogists at Ancestry.com, a discovery the family history site made when looking for connections between political foes.
And that's not all — Obama also is apparently related to conservative radio host and relentless critic Rush Limbaugh.
A genealogist at the Utah-based Ancestry.com, Anastasia Tyler, said Obama and Palin are 10th cousins through a common ancestor named John Smith, a pastor and early settler in 17th-century Massachusetts. Obama is related to Smith through his mother, as is Palin, Tyler said.
"Smith was against the persecution of the Quakers," Tyler said in an interview. "He was a very socially conscious man."
As for Limbaugh, he's also a 10th cousin of the president — one time removed — through a common ancestor named Richmond Terrell, who Tyler said was a large landowner in Virginia, also in the 17th century. "His history is a little more nebulous," Tyler said.
How do the genealogists come up with this stuff? Tyler said they start by picking the people they're interested in, then examine their family trees, going back further and further into history, looking for common surnames and locations.
In the recent project, genealogists looked at the trees of Obama, Palin, and Limbaugh but also a few others, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Fox News pundits Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. They didn't find anything much with the latter three.
But former President George W. Bush? He's related to both Obama and Palin, the site found. Obama and Bush are 11th cousins through common ancestor Samuel Hinckley, and Bush and Palin are 10th cousins one time removed, also through Hinckley — who, and stay with us now, was John Smith's father-in-law.
Ancestry.com has revealed in the past that Obama is related to investor Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt. It has also found that Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate, is a distant cousin of both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Princess Diana.
The site isn't the only source of this sort of celebrity genealogy information — in 2007, Cheney's wife, Lynne, discovered ancestral ties between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Obama while researching her book. She said the relationship was eighth cousin, though the Chicago Sun-Times traced it as ninth cousins once removed.
And one other thing from Ancestry.com: It also found that Palin is distant cousins with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter, through John Lathrop, who was exiled to the United States from England for being a pastor of an illegal independent church.
No it's not. I wonder if everyone in this country is tenth or eleventh cousins. I wouldn't be surprised. In fact, I'd almost be surprised if everyone wasn't. For example, I'm descended from John Alden of the Mayflower, but all told, he actually has a million descendants. So from that one ancestor, I'm distant cousins to a million Americans. How about all the rest of my ancestors? I think you see my point.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin
Not only is this not news I'm sure if it even really means anything in the first place. If you trace enough lines back you'd be surprised how many famous people are related to each other. What does this have anything to do with a person's current political views or anything else related to the life of the modern person?
Incidentally I'm related to the John White who was the leader of the Roanoke Lost colony does that mean I'm genetically predisposed to getting my friends and families lost?
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That was disapointing ..Should we show this Federation how to build a ship so we may have worthy foes? Typhonis 1
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eion wrote:Incest is a matter of degree. Hell, I'm a distant cousin to my dog and the bacteria in my stomach.
Curious that you would pair those two sentences. Something you aren't telling us?
"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little." -George Carlin (1937-2008)
"Have some of you Americans actually seen Football? Of course there are 0-0 draws but that doesn't make them any less exciting." -Dr Roberts, with quite possibly the dumbest thing ever said in 10 years of SDNet.
Isolder74 wrote:Not only is this not news I'm sure if it even really means anything in the first place. If you trace enough lines back you'd be surprised how many famous people are related to each other. What does this have anything to do with a person's current political views or anything else related to the life of the modern person?
Incidentally I'm related to the John White who was the leader of the Roanoke Lost colony does that mean I'm genetically predisposed to getting my friends and families lost?
I don't think it's supposed to mean anything besides, "Hey guys, isn't this interesting?" Maybe a little bit of, "I know we all hate each other, but look! We're family. Kinda."
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
Sarevok wrote:Is the huge number of people being 10th-20th degree cousin something unique to America due to successful early immigrants with lots of descendants ?
No, not really, I imagine. Hell, I'd expect the average American to be less related to his countrymen than the average nation that isn't heavily composed of immigrants. For instance, in Germany, you've mainly had Germans living in the area for millenia, and one would see a lot of intragroup marriages and so forth, with first and second and third cousins marrying each other (especially as, for a long time, the majority of people didn't really move far from their hometown). In the US, on the otherhand, one sees a lot more outbreeding, as it were. Italians marrying Irish, Scottish marrying French, Germans marrying English, and so on. This would push back relations further back to some extent, as opposed to groups that had marriages between closer relations (even if they are "only" marriages between 4th and 5th cousins or some such).
SDNet: Unbelievable levels of pedantry that you can't find anywhere else on the Internet!
Sarevok wrote:Is the huge number of people being 10th-20th degree cousin something unique to America due to successful early immigrants with lots of descendants ?
You can find the same thing pretty much anywhere. Just as an example. If you have ANY ancestors who came from Europe, congratulations you are a descendent of Charlemagne.
Human History is full of lots of population bottlenecks.
Sarevok wrote:Is the huge number of people being 10th-20th degree cousin something unique to America due to successful early immigrants with lots of descendants ?
You can find the same thing pretty much anywhere. Just as an example. If you have ANY ancestors who came from Europe, congratulations you are a descendent of Charlemagne.
Human History is full of lots of population bottlenecks.
Not to mention, a significant percentage of Chinese people are descended from Genghis Khan.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
