This morning's press release from the New England Historic Genealogical Society linking President Barack Obama with Scott Brown, the newly elected republican senator from Massachusetts, didn't really surprise me. If you go back far enough, it seems that almost everyone with deep New England roots can find a connection to one another. In this case, the connection is 10th cousins. According to NEHGS staff genealogists Chris Child and David Allen Lambert, Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham and Brown's mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill, Massachusetts, who did in 1687 at the age of 102. President Obama descends from Richard's eldest son, Jonathan Singletary, who later changed his surname to Dunham. Scott Brown descends from Jonathan's brother, Nathaniel Singletary. Child and Lambert also found that Brown is related to six other U.S. Presidents including George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Rutherford B. Hayes.

President Obama Related to Massachusetts Senator-Elect Scott Brown originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 10:41:52.

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