Sarah Palin related to Diana, Roosevelt; Obama to Brad Pitt

Here's a new twist in the 2008 US presidential elections. No, nothing serious. In fact, these recent discoveries are quite amusing. Ancestry.com has revealed that based on their records, genealogy experts have concluded that Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin is distantly related to the late Princess Diana. Wait, there's more. She's also a distant cousin to the late U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt! Now, how's that for pedigree?

The governor of Alaska and the princess are tenth cousins, while Palin and Roosevelt are ninth cousins once removed, said Ancestry.com. Palin and the late princess descended from John Strong and his wife Abigail Ford, according to the online genealogists. Strong was born around 1605 in England and emigrated to the United States, where he died in Massachusetts in 1699.
Palin and Roosevelt, on the other hand, share ancestor John Lothrop, who was born in England in 1584 and also emigrated to America, where he died in Massachusetts in 1653. According to family and local histories, Lothrop was a Puritan Presbyterian minister who arrived in the Massachusetts colony in 1634, said Ancestry.com.

The genealogical connections are not the first to gain attention in the 2008 US presidential campaign. Last year, Lynne Cheney, wife of the Vice President, said she found, while tracing her family roots, that her husband Vice President Dick Cheney was a distant cousin of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama! Other researchers also discovered that Barack Obama is distant cousins with actor Brad Pitt.

What do these all mean and what bearing do these revelations have on the current campaign? Well, nothing, I suppose. They don't add any plus points to the candidate. In Obama's case, I think his relation to Dick Cheney is even more of a disadvantage. He he. With Sarah Palin, it's good to find out that she comes from a well-heeled and illustrious line, though I doubt if these cousins' kin will endorse her candidacy. He he.

Postscript: Ancestry.com is a subscription-based genealogy research website with over 5 billion records online with more being added almost daily. The majority of records are from the United States, though a growing number of records are being added for other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and various European countries. Some of these records are free for anyone to access, but the majority are accessible only by paid subscription.


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