Jennie Spencer-Churchill, known as Lady Randolph Churchill, was a natural born US citizen, and a British socialite, the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill and the mother of British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
Under US citizenship law at the time of Churchill’s birth, despite the fact that his mother was a NATURAL BORN US citizen, she could not transmit her US citizenship on to young Winston owing to her marriage to a foreign national, Sir Randolph Spencer Churchill, who was Winston’s father. That would not be legally allowed until the passage of the Cable Act of 1922, well after Churchill’s birth in 1874. The Cable Act only confers citizenship, NOT NATURALLY BORN citizenship. It did not refer to, or alter the meaning of an Article II, Sec. 1, clause 5 “natural born citizen” in any way.
Churchill was granted HONORARY US citizenship by an act of Congress on 9 April 1963. It was understood that his birth to a an NBC citizen US mother in Great Britain did not make him a citizen by law.
Winston Churchill joked about being U.S. President in his speech to Congress. My father was English, my mother American. If it had been the other way around, I would be addressing you as President instead of as Prime Minister. That was not a legal opinion. If he had ever run for President, an election officer would have to decide whether to place his name on the ballot. And, his decision - which ever way - could have been appealed to a court of law. Over the years, we have had something like 1,000 decisions by election officers and judges concerning persons whose citizenship at birth rested on only one or two of the following three criteria (lineage by mother, lineage by father, or place of birth). They are unanimous.