 She's a publicity-hungry, ignorant airhead... and she's related to Sarah Palin. Pic: Jim Young
October 8, 2008 7:02 PM
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is distantly related to the late Princess Diana and late US President Franklin Roosevelt, genealogy experts said on Wednesday.
The governor of Alaska and the princess are tenth cousins, while Palin and Roosevelt are ninth cousins once removed, said Ancestry.com, online genealogists based in Provo, Utah.
The genealogical connections are not the first to gain attention in the US presidential campaign. Last year, Lynne Cheney said she found while tracing her family roots that her husband Vice President Dick Cheney was a distant cousin of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Other researchers discovered Obama is distant cousins
with actor Brad Pitt.
"When you've got candidates who have deep roots in
America, there's a good chance that they're going to have
some famous cousins," said Ancestry.com's chief family
historian Megan Smolenyak.
"We've all got literally millions of cousins. The trick is
finding that one little connection that results in something
like Sarah Palin being related to FDR or Diana," she said.
Palin and the late princess descended from John Strong
and his wife Abigail Ford, Ancestry.com said.
Strong was born around 1605 in England and emigrated
to the United States, where he died in Massachusetts
in 1699, Ancestry.com said.
Palin and Roosevelt share ancestor John Lothrop, who
was born in England in 1584 and also emigrated to America,
where he died in Massachusetts in 1653, Ancestry.com said.
According to family and local histories, Lothrop was a
Puritan Presbyterian minister who arrived in the
Massachusetts colony in 1634, said Ancestry.com, which
says it has access to 7 billion records online.
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