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News & ArtsFriday, January 29, 2010
Politics President Obama and the US Senator-elect Scott Brown are Related...
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 8:22 AM
...But at least not closely related:
Obama and Brown are distant cousins, Boston researchers say...According to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the president and Brown are 10th cousins. The group said Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Brown's mother, Judith Ann Rugg, are both descendants of Richard Singletary of Haverhill. Singletary died in 1687 when he was 102 years old.
3
I mean I can trace my roots back to the Boylen's but I don'e exactly see pictures of Queen Elizabeth I and say to myself "Hey Cuz!"
5
Well, now Brown HAS to vote for health care reform.
Can't leave family hanging like that, can he? Can he?
Can't leave family hanging like that, can he? Can he?
7
My Dad is from Haverhill, MA. I wonder...
Does it seem unlikely to anyone else that Richard Singletary lived for 102 years, in the 17th Century Massachusetts Bay Colony?
Records claim he was born "about" 1599 in Lincolnshire, England, and that he died on Oct 25th, 1687. I'm skeptical.
Does it seem unlikely to anyone else that Richard Singletary lived for 102 years, in the 17th Century Massachusetts Bay Colony?
Records claim he was born "about" 1599 in Lincolnshire, England, and that he died on Oct 25th, 1687. I'm skeptical.
8
Awesome. Can't wait for the conspiracy nuts to weigh in on this one. They'll be torn between wanting to believe this is evidence of rule by blue-blood royalty and wanting to believe Obama is secretly from Africa.
9
Peter, having grown up in that area and walked through some of the old cemetaries, yes, I also find that hard to believe. Most of them died in their 40s. Yeah, there was an occasional "old-timer" of 60 or 70, but I don't recall ever seeing a grave of anyone who lived to that kind of age.
10
@9, so my guess is that this guy was at least two people -- maybe a Senior and Junior with the same name? What's weird is that the genealogists seem to take the records at face value.
My grandmother (who lived most of her life in Haverhill) is 97 now, which I think in 17th Century MA would have qualified her as a sort of Methuselah...
My grandmother (who lived most of her life in Haverhill) is 97 now, which I think in 17th Century MA would have qualified her as a sort of Methuselah...
11
I'm not familiar with the New England Historic Genealogy Society, but I have learned through my own research to be somewhat skeptical of a lot of what comes out of that type of organization in that part of the country. It's not as bad as it was, a hundred or so years ago, but back then there was a palpable obsession with "proving" descendancy from Mayflower arrivals and other early settlers.
In my own ancestry I've found obvious errors, particularly in the work of the Daughters of the American Republic; one chart shows one of my guys in the family of Declaration signer Matthew Thornton -- but he is an obvious later insertion, since his elder "brother" was born only five months before him, and he was born in a different state than all the others before and after him.
I'm not that skeptical of the advanced age of the one guy; people did tend to die young then, but the average ages are heavily skewed by the extraordinarily high rate of infant mortality. If you were able to survive childhood, and were wealthy enough to avoid manual labor, and you weren't a drunk (almost everybody was back then), you stood a fair chance of living a long time, and the occasional guy would make a century or near to it. John Adams made 90.
In my own ancestry I've found obvious errors, particularly in the work of the Daughters of the American Republic; one chart shows one of my guys in the family of Declaration signer Matthew Thornton -- but he is an obvious later insertion, since his elder "brother" was born only five months before him, and he was born in a different state than all the others before and after him.
I'm not that skeptical of the advanced age of the one guy; people did tend to die young then, but the average ages are heavily skewed by the extraordinarily high rate of infant mortality. If you were able to survive childhood, and were wealthy enough to avoid manual labor, and you weren't a drunk (almost everybody was back then), you stood a fair chance of living a long time, and the occasional guy would make a century or near to it. John Adams made 90.
12
Fnarf, I think that DAR stands for Daughters of the American Revolution, also known as the Revoltin' Daughters. My grandmother, despite her conservatism, loved to use that smear against the snootiness of DAR types in her backwater town.
13
Good point about the infant mortality, Fnarf. Deaths during childbirth also accounted for a huge number of young deaths.
All things considered, while it may not be of much value in specific cases, spending some time in those old graveyards will definitely give you a better feel for what the lifespan was back then than any of the dubious record-keeping will.
And rob is right.
All things considered, while it may not be of much value in specific cases, spending some time in those old graveyards will definitely give you a better feel for what the lifespan was back then than any of the dubious record-keeping will.
And rob is right.
14
Yes, I'm sorry -- Revolution, not Republic. Still, their genealogical research is very suspect, as is the work of most of these "presidential genealogists".
16
Probably half the population on the planet is 10th cousins. And Jesus was everyone's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle.
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