Project done at intervals between 1984 and 1993. Utilized 20 libraries, 3 museums, 14 genealogists, and 3 historians, in 4 states. Work only took 30 to 40 hours. Data on my mother's side shows two direct Mayflower ancestries plus the following cousins: 5 Presidents, 1 First Lady of France, 1 Secretary of the Interior, 1 Supreme Court Justice, 2 Governors, Brigham Young, plus the founders of General Motors and Plymouth Cordage. By marriage: 1 Vice President, 1 State Senator, Abraham Howland, the Jenny Oil family, and Margaret Chase Smith.

 

As a direct descendant of Uhtred of Tyndale, then also of the Earls of Huntington and Northumbria prior to and including Waltheof II, of the Dukes of Normandy and Northumbria prior to and including Robert the First, and of the Kings of Scotland from Eochaid the Fair up to and including Malcolm the First, whose son was William the Conqueror.

 

The Scottish branch also makes me a descendant of Donalbain and a cousin to King MacBeth, who tried to overthrew the government with sorcery. In England, my ancestor John de Johnstone rode in the first Crusade with his cousin David, Earl of Huntington and Garioch. When they stopped in Rome, John refused to kneel to the Pope, and a poem was written celebrating the event five centuries later. I'd like to think that MacBeth and John de Johnstone helped to prefigure my own unshakable Libertarianism.

 

In John Jake's "Kent Family Chronicles" I find that my cousins in Cambridge, the Vassal family, were Tories who fled when the Colonial Army entered the city. General Washington took their house on Brattle Street as his headquarters during the American Revolution. 

 

In "The Illuminoids" by Neal Wilgus, I see that besides my Presidential cousins I am, at least by marriage, related to 22 other Presidents. This is because 60% of all American Presidents are related to each other at least by marriage. Also, at least by marriage, the Astor family, Cabell Sisters, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee.

 

I can almost hear Pa saying, "If you're so well connected, why ain't you rich?" On Pa's side there is 1 President of the Bank of America as a cousin, and Clara Barton by marriage. Otherwise mainly small landowners and farmers back to Viking times. I have always said "Swedish whoremasters and Viking pirates."