Posted on 01/13/2012 6:17:22 PM PST by Brown Deer
Leading Family History Site also Links GOP Candidates Huntsman and Perry to Former Presidents and American Legends
PROVO, UTAH (December 20, 2011) - As Americans prepare to cast their votes in the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries and caucuses starting January 3 in Iowa, Ancestry.com today announced that several key Republican presidential contenders have historic political leaders in their genes – suggesting that the upcoming primaries are really one grand ol’ family party.
The world’s largest online family history resource has discovered that Mitt Romney leads the pack in presidential lineage with six former Commanders–in-Chief in his family history. The former Massachusetts governor's family tree includes relations to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Coolidge, Pierce, Hoover and both President George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Not far behind in presidential pedigree is former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, whose family tree boasts four former heads of state: Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Coolidge and both Presidents Bush.
The buck stops with Texas Governor Rick Perry, who can claim President Harry Truman and legendary Texas Governor Sam Houston in his tree.
“We find in these politicians’ family trees links to the foundations of the country – early settlers seeking freedom and opportunities, Revolutionary War patriots, and even American legends,” said Anastasia Harman, Lead Family Historian for Ancestry.com. “Time and again American politicians have family ties to our country’s founders and past leaders. It seems the traits that forged past leaders have been handed down through generations to our current and hopeful leaders.”
Remember, this guys parents both belonged to the Church of the First Born. They are well known for frequent remarriage (serial polygamy). After studying the phenomenon (shown in the genealogies) for many years I've decided it's probably a way around a widespread problem with fertility.
I’m related to both Stonewall Jackson and General-President Grant. What does that make me?
“”My father grew up as a very angry person. When he signed up for the navy, the recruiting officer said, ‘Why did you fill out your application wrong?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘You put your grandmother’s name in where your mother’s name should be.’ He found out that he had been born out of wedlock. They never told him. Talk about being outraged!”
The saga continues: “Big Newt was physically enormous. Six foot three, and could use a nine-pound sledgehammer with one hand. I’d say from the time he was 16 to 35 he was in bar fights...My mother was very frightened of him. So she decides to file for divorce. He tries to talk her out of it, fails, scares her even more, so she divorces him and then marries Bob Gingrich, who is also adopted...So that’s the background, and people assume I’m some right wing, out-of-touch Neanderthal who doesn’t get it. I mean, I’m adopted! Both of my fathers are adopted! I mean, give me a break!”
Confusion over his identity was a recurrent theme in Newt’s boyhood. “I did not use the word ‘stepfather’ until I was talking to Marianne in 1982,” he says. “I had a very confused blockage in sorting out the relationships.”
“A heck of a mess when you think about it,” Gingrich’s mother, Kit, says reviewing the past. Big Newt, having been abandoned by his real father, Robert Kerstetter, was taken in by Newton and Hattie Belle McPherson and raised in a household where his real mother, Louise Kepner, was passed off as his sister. Bob Gingrich was a foster child, not adopted until he was 16. It sounds like a Faulkner saga. In Pennsylvania.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/vanityfair1.html
That's the thing about the mumps.
Right. Unless it is in your contract.
mark for later
I have a famous relative, too. John Colter, a mountain man from the Lewis & Clark Expedition, who was the first European to see Yellowstone. There was also a movie about him running naked from the Indians “Colter’s Run” - He ended up in Missouri married to one of my relatives on my father’s mother’s side. I prefer that lineage any day!!!!
You can skip the Presidents. I used the site to find out I (and probably 40 million others) am descended from Charles the Hammer. Of course, that’s only if the official story of who the real fathers are is true.
That’s an interesting story.
HEY!!! Any chance we can get to see you running naked? Who knows? You might get related to my father’s, mother’s, son side. If it dinna work out you can keep the linen...
Lake Victoria is like the Alpha and Omega of the world. Many very deadly diseases began there, including Ebola, Marburg, and likely AIDS plus several more. Not a place conducive to human well-being.
So am I. What up cuz?
I’m afraid to check out my wife’s ancestry. We might be cousins too.
Anyone who does genealogy realizes that the farther you go back, the fewer people there were and the more they were bottled up in a small area. When you start hitting the original colonies it gets really tight and there was a good amount of intermarrying, especially in the northeast. Alot of us here are probably related back in there somewhere.
Dunno know about Saundra, but it's cash up front for me, fred. Cash up front.
I don't charge a whole lot because . . . it's not a whole lot.
Driving home one evening durint the run-up to the 2004 election, I happened to tune in to the BBC. They were interviewing some expert on the British peerage. The twit reported that (1) victorious US presidential candidates are those with the most connections to the peerage and (2) thatthe French-looking John Forbes Kerry, who went to Viet Nam, was way ahead of GWB in that category.
Great. A no charge charge for a no charge.
Yo, Saundra. I still has a $1.98.
Exactly and considering how INACCURATE Ancestry.com and Mormon records are anyway, I’m doubting the validity of this.
Mormon genealogy is very inaccurate.
Ping
Let’s face it, Mormons are good at genealogy.
- - - -
Actually, they are very sloppy. When I was at BYU, I took a course on genealogy. I had several family records, copies of birth and death certs, etc. When I used LDS records to research my geneology for class (and for temple submission), I was appalled that the basic errors, names, dates, places, they even had my grandfather mixed up with another family of the same name who was no relation at all.
The goal of Mormon genealogy is to get names of the dead for their temple ceremonies, and most LDS don’t really care how accurate it is.
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