Presidents of the United States

Something related.
http://www.geni.com/blog/look-whos-related-george-washington-and-al...

Ulf, the list begins to fail as soon as you reach James Madison and W. H. Harrison. Thety are not related to GW, only "connected" in the geni sense. I didn't read any further.

Floyd, there are a couple of problems with that article. 33 is too conservative a number. All the presidents and all but one or two of the VPs are descended from Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, Hugues Capet and/or John I of England. Mondale (listed as non-royal in his race with Reagan) is descended from Danish and Norwegian kings of fairly late (i.e. late medieval) date.

The idea that one *has* to be royal to be elected is absurd when you look at Obama. His father was Kenyan; was he elected because his mother had some distant descent from royalty, as most of us do? She also had a trace of slave ancestry, didn't she?

The fact is, American statemen generally come from the class of bluebloods (not a technical term) who have dominated American business, politics and public affairs since the founding.

Re: Gerald Rudolf (Leslie Lynch King, Jr) Ford, Jr.

When I get a fresh Geni path for Gerald Rudolf Ford to avoid the "Cache Effects" cited by Jerome, he is a straight 11th cousin with a relatively shallow tree without "nontechnical blue-blood" clues. However, when I follow with a search for the path to Gerald Ford's birth father
Leslie Lynch King, Sr., I get a big difference of 21st cousin 4 times removed relation, with common great grandparents in the Ballliol family of Scotland, being at least distant cousins of John Bailliol, King of Scotland (but not without questions). There are also a good number of
"Sir Knights" in both ascending and descending branches of the tree. With a name like "King" one would expect some royal blood.

Thank so much Therasa for lending me your working direct cousin path to Michelle Obama, First Lady. I followed the path backward again, but was able to avoid what ever wrong turn I took before, until I found a person who was directly related to me as a cousin and not going back through Barack Obama. Then I used that person children and was able to push my relation as far as Charles Marion Shields, the slave owners son, the Geni-Cache effect might have been working, but trying his son, Adolphus Theodore Shields again I got bounced back through Barack Obama. Finding no other tricks work, I used the pin to connect Charles Marion Shields to Michelle Obama, yield an overlapping two piece path of a direct relations. I am Michelle's 17th cousin 2 times removed, which is essentially the same as your 18th cousin 1time removed, adding cousin order to number of removals (A conservation law?).

Thanks Again!!!
Floyd

Floyd, you are quite welcome!!! Glad that Worked out for you!!! ;-)
Regarding President Ford, maybe Lightning can trike twice in the same Way? Here's my path to him. It's a blood path and we descend from The Colt/Covalt/Covault line's from Which Samuel Colt of the Colt Gun Dynasty. ;-)

http://www.geni.com/path/Theresa-Renée-Eléna-Delgado-Tossas+is+rela...

Ulf, you are mistaken about Gerald Ford. In my original post to this discussion, Ford was in the group descended from Louis VI (and hence Hugues Capet and Charlemagne). In a later post he is descended from John Lackland. All this is on geni.

Sorry Jerome and others. I had only been offering an alternate path for others using his birth father, rather than his birth mother, in response to someone else's prior query. I had found a good while ago that Gerald Ford was my relatively close 11th cousin 0 removed, with minimum common 10th great grandparents, Robert and Amy Marsead Bird.

Ulf, of course it's true. Think of how many 22d great-grandparents you have. The royal ancestor is one, this line is another, and there are (how many?) others as well.

When you think about the B.C. world population and how marriages were determined it's understandable how close we are related. Based on my genealogy journey I found myself to be related to all 44 U.S. presidents and Hugues Capet, roi des Francs. Logically, if you can trace your ancestry to the U.K., France, and Italy, you will probably find a connection to the papacy, and/or royalty. Also due to arranged marriages, exploration, migration, and battles, surprising heritages and historical passages such as the Mayflower Pilgrims may be included in your genealogy research.

As you become more familiar with identifying specific areas for surnames associated with specific geological locations, you will find common connections among prominent families and individuals.

There is a genealogy connection with many of the U.S. presidents and if you are fortunate enough to be able to trace your genealogy back to Adam and Eve then you will understand this is a small world.

The following link will give you a semi-scientific view of how many people have ever lived on Earth:

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEver...

That is an interesting article, and the figures for the last 200 years are useful as an indication of what Malthus was talking about. But the original flaw is 2 humans in 50,000 B.C. According to Spencer Wells in *The Journey of Man* (Princeton, 2002), whose conclusions closely match the writings of other experts in the field, there was a significant population in Africa in 50,000 B.C. which had begun 100,000 years earlier with the mother of today's human race. At that time, humans migrated from the Rift Valley into Asia, down to Australia, and in two directions from central Asia: across the Bering Strait and into Europe. It is a fascinating book.

Once upon a time, it was claimed that no one could be king if he was not an descendant of Odin, funny we might think, but I think that all Kings in Europe are in fact just that, so it seems that even if they took away the kings power and gave the rule to the nations as republics, the majority of the west leaders are still descendants to Oden.

If the genealogies are to be believed, the majority of the West are descendants of Odin.

In fact, the vast majority are descendants of Charlemagne, so we don't even have to go as far back as Odin.

We're all related.

I correct the previous answer as following,

10 generations, you have approximately 1024 ancestors
20 generation back you may have up to 1 million ancestors
30 generations you can have up to 1,073,741,824 ancestors

@ulf Mette Marit was a special case - but yes, these people were in the same social circles.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/07/charlemagnes-dna... and the paper it refers to is the article I was thinking of wrt Charlemagne.

Harald, thanks for posting the link to the article. It confirmed what I was realizing -- after picking out 10 "gateway" ancestors, I found that they were all related to each other & all or (most of them) were grandchildren of the same ancestor, over & over. It did sort of take the "fun" of discovery out of the equation, though!

Yes indeed, thanks for the post, because earlier I started
to think how to explain what i saw for my inner sight,
a pyramid that was double with me in one end, a lot of people
in the middle, than going back to fewer people at the bottom,
now I see it clear how it all is built up, but still, one of the readers comment pointed out what a lot of us already know.

"I have recently been doing some work on the genealogy of British nobility on WeRelate and what is interesting is the large extent to which prominent people run in the family across so many fields – military, royal/noble, academic, political, literary etc. This really confirms the presence of a rigid class system which in turn undermines the random mixing assumption that underlies the mathematical modelling that has been done here.
Andrew Turvey
May 10, 2013 "

When I started this discussion of the French royal descent of U.S. presidents, I used only what showed up on geni by searching my own ancestors. Then Erica Isabel Howton showed me how to use the pushpin to trace connections directly. In my post of 8/8, I showed descents of the presidents from English royalty, and on 8/11 I showed results for the vice-presidents. This time, by again searching all the presidents and vice-presidents using the links on the U.S. Presidents and Vice-Presidents project, their descent from Henry III of England (one generation closer than John Lackland, the usual search subject) and Louis VI of France was quite straightforward. All of these results were achieved on geni in the last three days, clarifying the results posted since the beginning of this discussion. A few searches are tricky, since searches of both John Adams and George H. W. Bush usually default to their wives; the trick is to search their paternal grandfathers and then add two generations.

Thirty-nine (of 43) presidents and thirty (of 33) vice-presidents are directly descended from Henry III of England. Forty-two presidents and thirty vice-presidents are directly descended from Louis VI of France. Only the exceptions are listed below.

Of the other four, three presidents are descended from Henry III’s father, John Lackland: John Adams, Grover Cleveland and Dwight Eisenhower. William Henry Harrison is descended from John Lackland’s father, Henry II. John Adams, the only president not descended from Louis VI, is descended from Hugues Capet. (Also, Van Buren’s 17th ggf is the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II. It may be worth searching one of the emperors for our list.)

Of the other vice-presidents, Gerry, Hendricks and Mondale have no English royal ancestors.

Walter Mondale’s 18th ggf is Christopher II of Denmark; his 19th ggf is Erik V of Denmark; his 20th ggf is Christopher I of Denmark; his 22nd ggf is Sancho I of Portugal; his 23rd ggf is Afonso I of Portugal; his 27th ggf is Robert the Pious of France and his 28th ggf is Hugues Capet, all in the same direct line. In another line, his 22nd ggf is Haakon IV of Norway.

Elbridge Gerry (descended from Louis VI) has no English royal ancestors and Daniel Tompkins (descended from Henry III) has no French royal ancestors. Thomas Hendricks, the 21st vice-president, has no royal forebears listed on geni. (As for the controversy about John Tyler’s ascent on geni, I just used what came up a couple of days ago.)

The last thing I didn't catch, was it about
John Robert Tyler, 10 President of the United States,
and in any case, what controversy?

See multiple posts on 7/26 and 7/27 above.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States is mine and my sisters, Beth and Bre's cousin on my Mom's side of the family!