Comment by SketchySeaBeast
14 days ago
A relative from 800 years ago doesn't honestly seem that impressive. That's ~30 generations? That's a whole lot of people. Good luck finding a venue large enough for that family reunion.
14 days ago
A relative from 800 years ago doesn't honestly seem that impressive. That's ~30 generations? That's a whole lot of people. Good luck finding a venue large enough for that family reunion.
Agreed—all that it really shows is that all of them but Van Buren have some form of British ancestry. Even the fact that they're all descended from a King of England isn't especially noteworthy at those kinds of time scales.
That said, what's incredibly impressive, if true, is that someone managed to track each of their geneologies that far back along that line. That's not an easy feat. And this isn't just an internet legend: at the very least there really was a girl who really did put together a chart, and she got taken seriously enough to have it included in a Library of Congress exhibit on the Magna Carta [0].
I'd be interested to see the actual chart she made. One possible explanation for how she was able to do this is if each of the presidents connects up to English aristocracy fairly recently, which would account for the records being intact and would be more interesting than just the fact of a shared ancestor in ~1200.
[0] https://loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/magna-c...
> I'd be interested to see the actual chart she made. One possible explanation for how she was able to do this is if each of the presidents connects up to English aristocracy fairly recently, which would account for the records being intact and would be more interesting than just the fact of a shared ancestor in ~1200.
Obama's most recent aristocratic ancestor appears to be a "Sir Henry Bold" his 16x great-grandfather.
A quick look at some of the genealogies makes it appear that many rely on the same source, which lists 900 royal descendants that immigrated to the new world[1].
With 900 of them several generations back, it wouldn't be too surprising that many politicians would be related.
1: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806320745/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
Would be more clear if impressive if could see what fraction of USA population is related to this one person.
Oh, it's certainly an impressive feat. I too would like to see the chart she made.
> One possible explanation for how she was able to do this is if each of the presidents connects up to English aristocracy fairly recently
That would honestly be a more interesting finding personally, discovering that all of America's greatest political leader are just imported British aristocracy.
Where do you think the Founding Fathers came from?
In the early US "democracy" , only British aristocrats had a vote.
It’s more meaningful than you might think because the majority of people on earth probably aren’t decedents of this guy. Especially in the 1700’s when our first presidents where born.
Essentially zero US presidents are Asian, Hispanic, etc. Pick a Native American from 30 generations ago and you don’t see this kind of family tree. It’s an expanded circle of privilege through time.
Every European is related Charlamagne.
"In 2004 mathematical modeling and computer simulations ... indicated that our most recent common ancestor probably lived no earlier than 1400 B.C.and possibly as recently as A.D. 55. "
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...
2004 - 800 is a lot longer than 1778(or even 2024) - 1200.
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It's certainly a point, but I don't think "the US presidents are white guys" is going to win any awards for research or journalism. Even Obama, famously the first black president, has a family history of white guys.
Today most white people are descends of that guy, but go back to 1732 when George Washington was born and you’re looking at a much tighter family tree.
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It's a short history, considering Obama's mother is white. Or if you're only counting guys, his maternal grandfather is white.
There were several US presidents who had modest beginnings. I think this is more a consequence of exponential growth. 2**30 is ~1 billion ancestors, so by the pigeonhole principle and some fairly weak assumptions on mixing, you can count nearly every member of your ethnic group from that time as a distant ancestor. I think this girl landed on Plantagenet mostly because he would have a well-documented lineage compared to your average serf.
~2^30 describes the situation today, not in the 1700’s. ~2^20 would only be a million or so people at the time this country was founded.
Give it another 250 years and we’ll probably have a largely Asian president that’s also a descendant. IE: It’s an expanding circle of political elites combined with an expanding circle of descendants.
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