The following news release was received from Tom Champoux, Marketing Director, New England Historic Genealogical Society:
Click on the illustration to see it at the NEHGS website.
January 29, 2010 (Boston, MA) – Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in Boston have uncovered family lines that link President Barack Obama with Scott Brown, the newly elected republican senator from Massachusetts.
Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Brown’s mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill, Mass, who died in 1687 at the age of 102. Singletary, like his two descendants Obama and Brown, held public office, serving as town selectman in both Salisbury and Haverhill, Massachusetts in the 1650s.
President Obama descends from Richard’s eldest son, Jonathan Singletary, who later changed his surname to Dunham. Scott Brown descends from Jonathan’s brother, Nathaniel Singletary. This kinship makes Obama and Brown 10th cousins.
The research was conducted by NEHGS staff genealogists Chris Child and David Allen Lambert. Child and Lambert also found that Brown is related to six other U.S. Presidents including George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Rutherford Hayes.
In 2008, NEHGS discovered that President Obama is related to seven U.S. Presidents, including George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S Truman, and James Madison, as well as actor Brad Pitt.
About NEHGS
Founded in 1845, New England Historic Genealogical Society is the country’s oldest and largest non-profit genealogical organization, with more than 23,000 members nationally. NEHGS collects, preserves, and interprets materials that help make accessible the histories of families in America. The NEHGS research center, located at 99 Newbury Street, Boston, one of the most respected genealogical libraries in the field, is home to millions of books, journals, manuscripts, photographs, microfilms, documents, records, and other artifacts that date back more than four centuries. The award-winning web site www.NewEnglandAncestors.org offers access to more than 110 million names in 2,400 searchable databases. NEHGS staff includes some of the leading expert genealogists in the country, specializing in early American, Irish, English, Italian, Scottish, Atlantic and French Canadian, African American, Native American, and Jewish genealogy.
Click on the illustration below to see it at the NEHGS website.
And I am related to both. I am also a descendant of Richard Singletary. Barack Obama is my 9th cousin, once removed and Scott Brown is my 10th cousin, once removed. I think we need to have a family reunion at the White House now that two of my cousins live in the D.C. Area.