Shaking the Tree

Whether you base your family tree on Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974, or on Eve from the Garden of Eden, you would have to conclude that we are all related.  Still, it’s interesting that current presidential candidate Mitt Romney is related to six previous American presidents.

Here’s the story from  ancestry.com

How many Commanders-in-Chief can you get in one family tree? When it’s former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s family tree, the answer is six.

According to Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, Romney’s family tree connects him to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover, and both George H.W. and George W. Bush.

Romney is connected to Presidents George W. Bush (10^th cousins, twice removed), George H. W. Bush (10^th cousins, once removed) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (8^th cousins, twice removed) through Ann Marbury Hutchinson, a key figure in the development of religious freedom in America and early settler of Rhode Island and New York.

Romney is related to Presidents Calvin Coolidge (10^th cousins), Herbert Hoover (10^thcousins) and Franklin Pierce (6^th cousins, 4 times removed) through Thomas Richardson, a landowner in the late 1500s in Hertfordshire, England.

Romney isn’t the first presidential candidate with burnished political roots. “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, of the discovery. “Time and again American politicians have family ties to our country’s founders and past leaders.”