Making More Work For Myself, One President at a Time

February 28, 2008 7:48 AM

Strategies for Research: I'd like to go through each of the US Presidents, and show my kids how they're related to each. George Washington was pretty easy, as his ancestry is detailed back to the Scottish kings, so I can show the kids how they're the 22nd cousins, 11 times removed of the first president of the US. The going hasn't been so easy, since, and I'm fishing for some suggestions on tactics I can take to make the going a little easier.

I currently have subscriptions to Ancestry (world deluxe) and Burke's Peerage. I've been doing this for a few years online, now, so I'm pretty familiar with the resources on the web for this sort of information. What I'm really trying to ask is if there's a "best-practices" way of finding the particular attachment for which I'm looking most efficiently.

Take, for example, John Adams. I've got his family on both sides back 7-8 generations. I've still yet to find a common surname between our two branches. I suppose I could try working down some of those branches, and acquire some new surnames through descendants, but that seems like a lot of work.

Hopefully, someone out there has done a linking project like this, and has some pointers on how to proceed. My worst fear is that I'll end up spinning my wheels on a bunch of dead ends and eventually get burned out looking for a link.

posted by thanotopsis to sports, hobbies, & recreation (5 comments total)

You may have set yourself up to an impossible task, as to establish that connection of relativity, you may need to go back extremely far and some of those records are sketchy at best. Technically, I can go on Ancestry on one of my family lines and through other ancestry subscriber's input, trace a line back to the 1100's. Is this correct? I have no idea, as the info is not often cited. There is a tool on Ancestry, if you will, that lets you input your family information and it'll show you the "famous people" you're related to. I wasn't able to find it in a quick search, but did find that they offer family trees of some famous people here, with about five or more presidents in that list. It should help out at least with those individuals.
posted by Atreides at 8:16 AM on February 28, 2008

I seem to keep pitching geni.com on askmefi, but I have not affiliation with them other than thinking their site is pretty cool.

In the next few months they plan on rolling out a way to identify and link together family trees than have ancestors in common. Once that feature roles out you could import your current data (you have it on GEDCOM format, right?) and start matching up with exisiting trees to fill out your connections to presidents.
posted by jrishel at 8:21 AM on February 28, 2008

You want to check out this website.

I did a MeFi FPP on it in October, 2005, highlighting the fun parts, like that Barack Obama is actually Dick Cheney's distant (8th?) cousin, or that Giuliani's ancestors married each other even before he married his second cousin, John Kerry is related to the rabbi who created the (story of the) Golem of Prague, etc.
posted by Asparagirl at 8:21 AM on February 28, 2008

Technically, I can go on Ancestry on one of my family lines and through other ancestry subscriber's input, trace a line back to the 1100's. Is this correct? I have no idea, as the info is not often cited.

Well, that's why I got a subscription to Burke's Peerage, which can get me pretty well cited information back to that similar date. Washington's lineage has a minor contention, but enough contextual information to link him to the Dunbars, which were Earls directly descendant from the Duncans...which were the Scottish Kings that had all sorts of squabbles with MacBeth back in the day. I'm related to that line through my great-grandmother on my father's side, so it was easy to make a connection.

In fact, as long as I can find a connection to English royalty, I know I'm golden. Otherwise, I'm stuck looking for common surnames, and hoping for a non-marriage connection. Genealogy.com has (non-cited) a 6 generation lookup for each of the U.S. Presidents online, so that's where I'm starting so far.

It's not that I'm looking for data, I'm just looking for techniques to acquire the data more efficiently. Is brute force the only way to proceed here, or is there some tact that I should take that will get me answers more productively?
posted by thanotopsis at 8:43 AM on February 28, 2008

I'm unfamiliar with Burke's Peerage (other than knowing the name), so thats definitely cool that its cite supported. Here's a site I found that might help with Presidential genealogies (it may or may not be better than the genealogy.com one you have). Again, accuracy is questionable, but in the long run, unless you're adamant about supporting your research with unquestionable fact, for the purpose of just entertaining your kids non-cited sources might work just as well.
posted by Atreides at 10:39 AM on February 28, 2008