Genealogists Call Bush and Kerry kin

Honolulu Star-Bulletin ^ | February 16, 2004 | Matt Sedensky

[Scenic Sounds]

Democratic presidential candidates are constantly being compared with the current commander in chief. Now, two Hawaii genealogy buffs say they have proof President Bush and the current Democratic front-runner share similarities thicker than water.

Bruce and Kristine Harrison, publishers of historical databases, traced back the family histories of Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

The result? They're cousins.

Well, 16th cousins, three times removed, to be exact. But cousins, nonetheless.

Truth be told, one might find such distant family ties between Bush and any of the four other major Democratic candidates.

The link between the president and the Rev. Al Sharpton might date back a bit further, Bruce Harrison said, but tracing ancestries helps illuminate a greater message on human interconnectedness, if not one on the centrification of the nation's politics.

"I believe everybody on the planet is related if you go back far enough," said Harrison, 51, whose Millisecond Publishing in Waimea on the Big Island puts out a line of ancestral history CDs. He and his wife have spent the last eight years compiling information from hundreds of genealogical books and periodicals. "We're setting the stage for others to explore their curiosity," he said.

Harrison says the search through family trees also turned up other big-name ancestors of Kerry and Bush. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is the president's ninth cousin, twice removed, while Kerry can count Johnny Appleseed as his sixth cousin, six times removed. Both the president and the Massachusetts senator can claim ties to figures ranging from Charlemagne to Walt Disney to Marilyn Monroe, Harrison said.

For an average user of the Family Forest software, it could be more difficult to find such well-known links, but Harrison says he believes everyone can find some ancestral information in the database.

As for the political adversaries' kinship, the only reunion in store seems to be a debate, should Kerry win his party's nomination. A Bush campaign spokeswoman said she had no comment on the issue. A message left with Kerry's spokesman was not returned.

The Honolulu County Genealogical Society's Mary Ann Bolton said she was not too impressed with those who troll family trees looking for star-studded connections.

"I don't really put too much into that," she said. "That's just bragging rights."

Harrison said his motivation in finding the link wasn't political, nor was it purely curiosity. Since publicizing the Bush-Kerry relation, the number of daily visits to his Web site has more than tripled.

[microgood]

MSN had this tree last Friday which says Bush and Colin Powell were related and had the actual tree in there. But Bush went back to a King of England (Longshank) and the tree split about 1300 or so and then Colin was a descendant of a Jamaican slave named Sarah way down the line. The tree started in the 1300s though. Pretty wild stuff. Does not mean anything about today but is interesting.

[js1138]

That means Bush is also Irish. Skull and bones must be having fits. Garry Trudeau must be having fits.

[red-dawg]

Harrison said his motivation in finding the link wasn't political

[yevgenie]

commish wrote:
"I believe everybody on the planet is related if you go back far enough," said Harrison, 51, I believe thier names where Adam and Eve, Mr. Harrison.

I'd say even later than Adam and Eve, like, Noah's family.

[Scenic Sounds]

Did you know that dogs and humans shared 95% of their genetic code???

Thanks, I didn't know the details. I knew only that we are nearly as evolved as dogs in many ways and in some ways even more evolved. Spiritually, though, we have a long way to go to catch up with dogs. ;-)

[Callahan]

I miss ol' Alex. I used to listen to his show all the time when I lived in Austin. He had a different tinfoil hat for every occasion.

[GeronL]

I heard that figure a long time ago. Some TV show where some atheist says we are almost monkeys and someone on the other side said you are almost a dog too.

[JRios1968]

16 degrees of Ketchup?

[Dan from Michigan]

Since Bush and JFK are both of English blood, one of my ancestors might have buried one of theirs in a backyard.....

[TedsGarage]

Kerry is not Irish. He's half English and half Jewish. They're related through his mother's family, the Forbeses.

[CzarNicky]

"Because King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II wouldn't have either."

He started it.

[ASA Vet]

believe thier names where Adam and Eve, Mr. Harrison

According to later stories in your book the
line would start at Noah and wife.

[js1138]

That was sarcasm. Kerry seem to have a protestant ancestor who passed through Ireland in the 1600s. Or something like that.

[Theresawithanh]

To paraphrase the great Homer Simpson

"Genealogists, is there anything they don't know?"

;-D

[Vigilanteman]

I would suspect that the common ancestor to both Bush and Kerry is one John Lathrop, who was exiled from England to America in 1634 and was later expelled from the Plymouth Bay colony for preaching an unorthodox form of Puritanism. Almost anyone who can trace their ancestry to the Barnstable area of Cape Cod is related to Lathrop including U.S. Grant, FDR and Teddy. Interestingly enough, Benedict Arnold also springs from the same family tree and, I suspect, is the nearest relative of JFK II-- the exception being that Benedict was a real, not an imaginary, war hero before he changed sides.

[ccmay]

Yep, almost anyone in this country with a drop of English blood can get back to the English Royal family.

The mathematics of genealogy fascinate me. Like you say, almost anyone with any English blood can find their way back to one or another of the kings, and moreover, if you had an ancestor in this country before 1850, it is a virtual mathematical certainty that you are a Mayflower descendant as well.

What's more, it can be shown that essentially all people of European ancestry are descendants of both Charlemagne and Mohammed, and practically everyone save a few pure-blood Indians and Pacific Islanders are descendants of Julius Caesar, Nefertiti, and Alexander the Great.

There was a great story on this in the Atlantic Magazine a few years ago, called "The Royal We".

-ccm

[foreverfree]

I miss ol' Alex. I used to listen to his show all the time when I lived in Austin. He had a different tinfoil hat for every occasion.

He webcasts on infowars.com (click on the main stream or the backup stream on the right side of the screen). I have on his rebroadcast of today's show as I type. He has a guest on talking about a Baptist church having a turn in your guns day.

foreverfree

[foreverfree]

Oops, the guest just hung up.

foreverfree

[Cacique]

btt

[Amelia]

Ewwwww!

I'd never heard that one before.