From NPR:
Sen. Barack Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney are distant cousins. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry have dozens of shared relatives. Megan Smolenyak, chief family historian at ancestry.com, talks to Alex Cohen about tracing back the family tree.
Looks like Walt Disney is also George Bush’s 13th cousin, once removed… interesting.
Better get back to work on my family tree.
From the AP/NPR:
Though they may spar across the political aisle, Vice President Dick Cheney is close enough to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to call him “cousin.” Eighth cousin, that is.
Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife, revealed this tantalizing bit of political trivia during a television interview Tuesday.
Apparently Cheney’s wife discovered the link while researching her memoirs.
A spokesman for the Obama Presidential Campaign said, “obviously Cheney is the black sheep of the family.”
Gotta love family history. I’ve had a lot of fun tracing our family history back using Geni and other online services. I’m interesting in finding out more about the Pendleton pedigree, which is on my mom’s side of the family.
According to her spokeswoman, Sen. Obama, D-Ill., is a descendent of Mareen Duvall. This French Huguenot’s son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650’s from England, said Ginny Justice, a spokeswoman for Lynne Cheney.
Got any interesting history in your family tree?