Obama and billionaire Buffett are distant cousins - afp

[demoleft]

just a curious news.

AFP - President Barack Obama and billionaire financier Warren Buffett are very distant cousins going back to an indentured servant from 17th century France, Ancestry.com said Tuesday.

Experts from what is billed as the world's largest family history website traced the two men's lineage to Mareen Duvall, who immigrated to Maryland from France in the 1650s.
...
Obama's ancestry was linked to that of former vice president Dick Cheney when Obama ran for president in 2008. Cheney's wife, Lynne, said she found her husband and Obama were related through a French emigre, who turned out to be Duvall.

"Mareen Duvall had 12 children and he can have quite a number of descendents and it's hard to begin to speculate the number of people who could possibly related to Mareen Duvall in the United States," Ancestry genealogist Anathasia Tyler told AFP.

source: http://www.france24.com/en/node/4949381

funny.

[rug]

1. Everybody is a distant cousin.

[demoleft]

2. hehe - true. n/t

[Cairycat]

3. Exactly. We're all related,

so why should we be such chumps to each other?

Genealogy is fun though - my husband and I found out we are ninth cousins.

[demoleft]

4. fun, indeed. the more so...

...since i suppose you were both unaware of a link - or?

[provis99]

5. we're pretty much all sixth cousins.

at least 99% of people in England with English ancestry are descended from King Edward III.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/EdwardIIIDescent.php

personally, I rather dislike the idea that I might be descended from royalty or nobility; I'd rather think of myself as a salt-of-the-earth peasant.:-)