Hunh. Evidently the NEHGS hasn’t nearly enough paid work to keep its researchers occupied.
Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society found some remarkable family connections for the three presidential candidates — Democratic rivals Obama and Clinton, and Republican John McCain.
Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother’s side, is also a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette. Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, his cousins. McCain is a sixth cousin of first lady Laura Bush.
And how about that connection to Robert E. Lee, eh? LOL!
Most surprisingly, Obama — the man who could become America’s first African-American president — is linked by ancestry to Robert E. Lee, who commanded the armies of the Southern slave-holding states during the American civil war.
So — now that we’ve finally established Obama’s bona fides, will that make him only half as scary to some elements of the American electorate?
Meanwhile, Polimom can climb the family tree 9 generations, and near as I can see, I don’t connect with any of these families — or anybody else famous, for that matter. I’m still holding out hope for Greta, though.
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An aside — genealogy is typically a quiet, scholarly pursuit, and as a rule there are no data access problems. But when a press release is picked up by the AP and CNN, there tends to be rather a LOT of online attention… and the result is as you’d expect: the NEHGS servers are failing under the onslaught. (There’s just no chance a genealogist would have thought to upgrade the service…)
If you’re interested in looking at a couple of the .pdf’s, here are direct links to a couple of them. They were the only two files I’d opened before the site was overwhelmed.
Obama – Bush
Obama – Johnson
Update: The NEHGS has restructured their home page, put up a note acknowledging the “increased traffic”, and removed the links to the genealogy reports.