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Actually, this isn't that unusual. My mother's parents came from Eastern Europe at that time, and with the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tsarist Russia, there were a lot of dislocated people. My maternal grandparents came here on a boat that left Germany and was filled with people of various ethnic and religious groups. When they settled in New Jersey, they separated into various churches. Apparently, some, through associations on the ship, ended up in different church groups when they got here. For me, it's my maternal grandfather whose original religion is a question mark.

All of this is further complicated by the fact that the records of these ancestors are in cyrillic. When they said their names, it was up to those registering them to assign english letters to the spoken names.

Massachusetts has quite a few residents of Eastern European ancestry and they look like any other old Yankee resident. It isn't at all unusual for it to be assumed that those of Eastern European ancestry are old Yankee or Irish.

But in this case the records in Bennisch allegedly show that the change of name occurred there (to correct myself on a more careful reading, in 1902, but I still find it almost impossible to believe somebody there would have changed his name to Kerry at that time.)

I am not disputing that geneological records got messed up during immigration. My own great-grandfather was the ONLY Protestant with his surname in the entire USA. Everyone else with that name was Jewish. We found a newpaper article that said he had converted to the Methodist Church (odd phrasing in Indiana...most would simply say "joined").

However, I am Senator Kerry's age and have known this for over 30 years, because we were working on our family ancestry. Senato Kerry is not talking about his great-grandfather, but his GRANDFATHER. One would think he would have had a bit of curiosity before now.