Comment by lolinder
14 days ago
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.