Not that it is particularly significant, but you do find some interesting family connections.

This could make for one odd family reunion: Barack Obama is a distant cousin of actor Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.

Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society found some remarkable family connections for the three presidential candidates — Democratic rivals Obama and Clinton, and Republican John McCain.

Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother's side, is also a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette. Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, his cousins. McCain is a sixth cousin of first lady Laura Bush.

Now there really are some interesting connections turned up here, but they really are not that significant, especially when you see them in the historical context of those relationships. You find family connections between the candidates going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which at first blush could lead one to ask questions about the importance of certain families and why those families consistently rise to the top.

But then you find bits of historical trivia like one I encountered last night while reading McCullough's excellent biography of John Adams (I don't get HBO, so I have to read the book instead of watching the miniseries). Some families, especially early American families, have been quite prolific. For example, John Adams' great-grandfather had no fewer than 89 grandchildren (including the second President's father). If one presumes that only 2/3 of those grandchildren had only 5 children each pretty small number for that era), the next generation would have been some 300 great-grandchildren -- and the generation after that would have been 1000 great-great-grandchildren. You can continue the exponential growth for the next couple of generations, at which point you will discover that within a couple more generations we are into the tens of thousands of descendants. And as one works one's way back the family tree from today, remember that by the time you drill back to the Civil War era, most living Americans are looking at 64 (or even 12 ancestors of that generation. Frankly, it would be shocking not to find a connection, however collateral, to the Adams family (or the prolific Lees of Virginia). In other words, the family connections signify nothing.

Posted by: Greg at 09:53 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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