DNA helps link Obama and Senator-elect Brown

[steven johnson]

Obama is related to a number of prominent Americans: Both President Bushes, Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman, and James Madison.

Now it turns out that he's related to Senator-elect Scott Brown.

Today, genealogists are linking President Obama to Senator-elect Scott Brown. That's right: the man who took away the president's filibuster-proof margin in the U.S. Senate is also, it turns out, a 10th cousin, says Chris Child, the New England Historic Genealogical Society researcher who helped uncover the link through not only good old-fashioned research (sites like Ancestry.com help), but in part through DNA (press release PDF).

"Part of the lineage of Obama on this chart was actually confirmed through DNA," Child tells me by phone. "In this case we can be really sure because he had a second cousin twice removed who took a DNA test. The DNA study worked out to confirm which family he ultimately descended from."

"Part of the lineage of Obama on this chart was actually confirmed through DNA," Child tells me by phone. "In this case we can be really sure because he had a second cousin twice removed who took a DNA test. The DNA study worked out to confirm which family he ultimately descended from."

The link is simple, if distant. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Brown's mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill, Mass. Not only did the man produce notable offspring, he also held public office and managed to live to 1687, putting him at the then-unthinkable age of 102, according to NEHGS.


DNA helps link Obama and Senator-elect Brown

[Bitwit1234]

1. So where did they get Obama's DNA?

And how do they know brown is a descendant of this Singeltary. Genealogy isn't as easy as people think.. And how many markers link Brown and Obama. I will bet you that if you take 25 markers and then match up people you will find you match up to the same people that this genealogist says Brown and Obama are related.

We did our relative on FamilyTreebyDNA and found 2500 people who we are connected to by 25 markers and add more each day.

Now if you go to 37 and get 36 hits maybe, but if you go to 67 and get 66 you know for sure. So DNA markers are not what you think they are. And a person who not be a very good genealogist unless they told the people they were testing that little fact.

Our ancestor was an orphan who took a name. FamilyTreeDNA can not find one person in this country who we can connect to thru 37 markers except one. That person's ancestor lived next door to my great great grandfather. In fact my great great grandfather married this person's maternal great great great aunt. The connection there is probably the fact that my 2xgrgrandfather visited next door once or twice. So as I said DNA is tricky. I sure would like to come up with a match and find out what our family name really is.

FamilyTreeDNA is the largest testing site in the country and if we can/t get a 36 or even a 35 match out of 37, how hard is it to get all those matches to Obama. I don't think so. It is just people wanted to be related to someone famous.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. This isn't really very surprising...

given the way descendancy works, especially. Tenth cousins share a common ancestor 11 generations back (at which point one has 4096 unique ancestors). Two people who share New England ancestry going back to the early 17th century are more likely to be related than not, given that the colonial immigrant population of New England at the time was quite small, comparatively, and families were much larger; a single 17th century couple may have hundreds thousands of descendants today (it's estimated that the 26 Mayflower passengers have over 30 million living descendants).

Obama is also my tenth cousin; our common ancestor was a French Huguenot named Duvall who immigrated to Maryland in the 17th century (some of whose other descendants include Robert Duvall, John Waters, Harry Truman, and the late Duchess of Windsor).

[jenmito]

3. I wonder when the media's going to start reporting important things about Brown instead of just

treating him like a movie star. He has flip-flopped and lied, but all most people know about him is how much body hair he had years ago and who he's related to (and that he has a truck).

[rgbecker]

4. I think the press likes nothing more than to build someone up.....

so the public thinks they have a real star....and then the second chance to sell papers is when they take him down.....I predict it won't be long til Brown hits the skids.

[jenmito]

5. SNL is portraying him as a sex symbol tonight.

Hopefully the media will start talking about his record SOON.

[Eric Condon]

6. I hate crap like this

What point are they trying to prove? If they look hard enough, everyone is related. I bet everyone on this site would probably find out they're related to Cheney if they dug deep enough into their genealogies. It's just pointless. It's not like it makes them "family."

[wisteria]

7. OH, another Brown mention-oh boy. You might think this guy was the Pope. n/t