Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Barack Obama's Family Tree

This week's issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society E-newsletter had an article about Barack Obama's family tree. The e-newsletter article said:

"Chicago Sun-Times newspaper reporter Scott Fornek has been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists' 2008 Salute to Excellence National Media Awards for his examination of the family history of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

"The New England Historic Genealogical Society, which conducted substantial research on Obama’s ancestry, is mentioned in the article, along with a quote from staff genealogist Christopher Child. The article provides links to the 5-part special report, which includes more than 30 sketches of various Obama ancestors. You can read the article in the Chicago Sun-Times online at www.suntimes.com/news/elections/548552,CST-NWS-otreemain09.article

"Earlier this year, NEHGS released a story that showed Senator Obama and actor Brad Pitt are distant cousins. Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie are also cousins, as are Senator John McCain and First Lady Laura Bush. NEHGS staff has done extensive research on many public figures and politicians."

I missed the Sun-Times article when it was first published. On the article web page, the sidebar has links to biographies of 30 of Obama's relatives, an interactive family tree (done with The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding software?) and also a PDF of a Obama's family tree in graphical form. It's interesting that the family tree doesn't go back to more of the known New England ancestors (like Edward FitzRandolph and Thomas Blossom) - perhaps they ran out of space on the chart. I didn't find any other common ancestors that I share with my distant cousin.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dear Randy,


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With kind regards,


Christian Richtscheid

--
Editorial Staff


Christian Richtscheid

Address:
OSN - Online Social Networking GmbH
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Tel.: +49 (0) 40 238 49 140
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