Thread: Are you related to Obama?

NEW YORK, N.Y. - And you thought it was strange to hear that Barack Obama was related to D!ck Cheney. Well, betcha can't guess who he's related to now!

Yup ? the president 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 radio host and relentless critic Rush Limbaugh. Might you want to reconsider some of your recent comments, Mr. Limbaugh, now that you're apparently family?

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 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 Roosevelt and Diana, the Princess of Wales.

*The site isn't the only source of this sort of celebrity genealogy information ? in 2007, Cheney's wife, Lynne, discovered ancestral ties between the Republican vice-president 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.

Happily for both Obama and Coulter, no doubt, they do not seem to be related.

Originally Posted by Big Gills

When I saw this article on who they say are related to Obama I thought it was funny to share with you folks here. But do you think any of it is actually true? Freedom of the press allows them to print what they like unless it can be disproved. All of this people he is related to are on his mothers side. I would be interested to see who he is related to on his fathers side?

I'm with you, Margie, I have to question how much is true, and how much is speculation. My mother spent a lot of time tracing our family history (that's how I know I'm related to so many Cormiers), and it involved a lot of travel, visiting courthouses and churches and searching through records, and a lot of correspondence with the Mormon Church (they maintain vast genealogy records, and are happy to help anybody of any religion). A lot of times what you think is a connection turns out not to be. "Common surnames and locations" don't prove anything, they just provide hints that need to be verified, and often prove false. And it's even harder when you're looking at people whose ancestry goes back to slaves, because freed slaves sometimes took their last slaveowner's surname, sometimes not, and it's not uncommon for those surnames to abruptly change from one generation to the next.

Studying your genealogy can be addictive. My mom's research turned up ancestors going all the way back to one of my 15th great-grandfathers, born in 1418, and she found some fascinating stories and pictures. Turns out my sister-in-law is a descendant of Miles Standish, who came over on the Mayflower. And there's a really cool story documented at this website, about my 3rd cousin 3 times removed, Pardon Davis, an abolitionist from Wisconsin, being locked up in Louisiana for assisting escaped slaves, and how his father went down there and rescued him. One thing on my bucket list is going down there and trying to investigate what was the "Yankee trick" he used to fool the authorities into releasing him.

http://www.wlhn.org/wnf/stories/pardondavis.htm