Obama is Palin's 10th Cousin

POLITICS - According to Ancestry.com President Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are all cousins. 10th cousins specifically.

The online genealogy service Ancestry.com now reports that Obama and Palin are 10th cousins, and Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed. In both cases, the ties date to the 1600s.

Obama’s distant family ties to former president George W. Bush and former vice-president Dick Cheney surfaced during his presidential campaign. Obama is also a distant cousin of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt, according to Ancestry.com.

“It just shows how all of these politicians, they’re on different sides of the political spectrum, but in the end they’re all part of what makes America great, and they all go back to deep American roots,” says Anastasia Tyler, the lead genealogist on the project.

Obama’s white, Kansas-born mother’s side of the family dates back quite far and according to genealogyofpresidents.blogspot.com almost all the U.S. presidents in recent history are descendants of Charlemagne, the French King and Emperor of Rome.

Both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama can track their family trees back to Massachusetts settler John Smith, a Protestant pastor in the 1670s who opposed the persecution of Quakers. Smith’s wife was the sister of one of the first governors of the Plymouth Bay colony, Thomas Hinckley. Hinckley’s father, Samuel, is the familial link between Obama and Bush.

In some cases there is more than 1 connection between some presidents. Almost like a small town with a limited gene pool.

Obama’s and Limbaugh’s common ancestor is Richmond Terrell, who settled in Virginia around 1656 and acquired a large amount of land.

Everyone is related if you go back far enough, but its less likely to be in recent centuries. Although if the presidents are all descended from the early settlers you realize that there really was very FEW early settlers.

But boy oh boy, they must have had a lot of children.