President Lincoln and President Obama share ancestors

Leading up to the Presidential Inauguration on Tuesday, there has been plenty of talk about similarities and connections between President Lincoln and President Obama, but there’s a closer more personal connection they share that’s been overlooked, DNA.

 

According to the ancestral history that had already been mapped out in the

Family Forest® New World Edition , there’s a movie you can order today from NetFlix or Amazon to watch captivating portrayals of ancestors of Presidents Lincoln and Obama by Hollywood icons.

 

President Obama has presidential genes in abundance, and we wish him all the best at this exciting pivotal point in human history.

 

Enjoy the historic moment on Tuesday!

 

P.S. The Family Forest® Project is hoping for validation from President Obama (and/or one or more of the only other four qualified people who can give it) before we find a distribution partnership alliance for our new edutainment release. Details available here.

 

Sarah Palin is related to who?

While watching Sarah Palin and Alec Baldwin talking together Saturday night on SNL I couldn’t help wondering if they had any idea they are related to each other. Even though they are fairly distant cousins, because their first ancestral connection is back in the Royal Channel according to recorded history, they do actually share ancestors with each other.  

 

We ran some outline reports of immigrant ancestors from the Family Forest® to see who else shares ancestors with Gov. Sarah Palin. There are some of her surprising family ties in the Thomas Emerson report (see PDF here. family-forest-outline-report-for-thomas-emerson), and more of them can be found in the other reports (William Arnold, Deacon Samuel Bass, Thomas Brigham, Zechariah/Zachariah Field, Surgeon John Greene, Stephen Post, Richard Sears, and Corporal Roger Wellington), which are available upon request. 

 

Following are some tips for exploring the Thomas Emerson report. Sarah Palin: page 55

 

Hawaiian family ties

 

Cooke family of Bank of Hawaii, Molokai Ranch, etc.: pages 4-25 

 

Waterhouse and Alexander families of Alexander and Baldwin: page 7

 

Atherton family of Atherton Foundation: page 8

 

Monty Richards family of Kahua Ranch: page 13

 

Cowell family of Kowali Farm: page 16

 

Other family ties (both for Sarah Palin, and also for her Hawaiian cousins)

 

Ford and Firestone heirs: page 2

 

Mitt Romney: page 37

 

Buffalo Bill Cody: page 41

 

President Taft: page 34

 

Astronaut Alan Shepard: pages 54-55

 

Famous Civil War Generals: page 57

 

Tennessee Williams: page 58

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shirley Temple: page 59

 

President Fillmore: page 63

 

Bill Gates: page 67

 

Please keep in mind when exploring this outline report that it is only one tiny snap shot from the Family Forest®, and it’s much more fun to explore these connections visually via the disc.

   

John Adams on HBO portrayed by relative

Kristine and I have been very absorbed in an excellent HBO edutainment mini-series presentation of “John Adams” by the very captivating historian, author, and Medal of Freedom recipient, David McCullough.

 

Mr. McCullough clearly employs one of the two concepts behind MPC’s trademark A People-Centered Approach to History®, history as seen through the lives of the people who created it. The other concept behind the trademark is that individuals within the Family Forest® can instantly become a central hub, the starting point to spoke out and visually explore family ties generation by generation, very often for many centuries.

 

Family ties are already so extensively networked in the Family Forest® that Paul Giamatti, the Hollywood actor who so engagingly portrays John Adams, is actually lineage-linked to many of the key characters in the mini-series, including John Adams himself.

 

The list also includes Adams’ wife Abigail (Smith) Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many of the other signers of the Declaration of Independence, David McCullough, and the co-executive producer of “John Adams,” Tom Hanks.

 

But far more important than connecting celebrities and famous people to each other through family ties, the Family Forest® is the best digital central source for personally connecting many millions of everyday people to key historical figures and events.

 

While they may not yet be able to start in the Family Forest® with themselves or their children, as can Tom Hanks, Elvis Presley, Madonna, Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece, Martin Scorsese, Britney Spears, Barbra Streisand, Lucille Ball, Barack Obama, President Bush, Prince William and Prince Harry, etc., most of those countess millions of everyday people have one or more ancestors within the last few centuries who are already linked-in.

 

It’s one thing to abstractly say “We’re all related.” It’s quite another to visually explore the maps of generation-by-generation family ties in the Family Forest® which connect us personally (according to recorded history) to the historical characters and events we see on HBO and at the movies, in Vanity Fair and other people-centered magazines, and in our children’s text books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

George Washington’s Lower Part and Presidential Trivia

There is a great wealth of fascinating and enriching tidbits and historical trivia that has been squirreled away in old books over the centuries, and we have been digitally indexing as much of it as possible into the Family Forest®, to make those nuggets easy to discover. We thought it might be fun to point out a few of them for President’s Day.

 

For instance, most people probably do not know that our first commander-in-chief,

President George Washington had a body double. For the rest of the story see

George Washington’s Lower Part.

 

Do you know that many of the United States Presidents have Hollywood Connections?

 

Do you know that your ancestors may also be Presidential ancestors?

 

Do you know that President Bush and Senator John Kerry are related?

 

Do you know why Hugh Hefner invited both Bush and Kerry to his Playboy mansion in 2004?

 

Do you know that when Prince Charles visited the White House in 2005 he was actually visiting his cousin?

 

Do you know why NPR did a story about FamilyForest.com, Barack Obama, Walt Disney, Brooke Shields, Humphrey Bogart, and President Bush?

 

If you follow these links, the next time someone asks “Do you know ……

 

Happy President’s Day!

Setting the Record Straight

Happy New Year!

 

Isn’t the beginning of a new year always a perfect time for a fresh start? I think so, and I’d like to take this opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about the Family Forest® Project.

 

Does the Family Forest® map out more of your own early ancestral history than you can see anywhere else? Almost certainly.

 

Will the Family Forest® help you find your grandmother? Probably not, there are many free Internet resources for that purpose.

 

Is the Family Forest® intended to be a replacement for, or competitor of, Ancestry.com, Rootsweb, One Great Family, MyHeritage, I-Family, Geni, 23andMe, NEHGS, the Genographics Project, etc.? Absolutely not, but it is the perfect companion resource for each and every one of them.

 

Can the Family Forest® really pull up ancestor charts with more than one million boxes filled in with names of ancestors? Yes, and probably for more than 50,000 individuals, including some who are quite likely to be your own ancestors.

 

Is the Family Forest® just about genealogy? Definitely not. It is a great genealogy resource, built upon a great wealth of knowledge that the experts have recorded over the centuries, but in the Family Forest® genealogy is only the starting portal into the larger and more captivating worlds of entertainment, history, and ancestral travel.

 

Is the Family Forest® the best digital central source for generation-by-generation ancestral pathways leading to and from the 2008 Presidential Election? Yes, absolutely. For proof, just pull up a 30-generation ancestor chart for the new Democratic front-runner Barack Obama. Or try any of his top three competitors, or Bill Richardson, or Mitt Romney, etc.

 

Some of the helpful links on our FAQ page should help clear up any remaining misconceptions about the Family Forest® Project.

 

The Family Forest® has been packed with virtually limitless delight and enrichment, and the stage is now set for you to visually follow your ancestral history curiosity.

 

Thank you for your interest in the Family Forest® Project. Kristine and I wish you and yours a very remarkable and prosperous 2008.

 

The Point of No Return

On this day in history 234 years ago an event occurred which impacted the life of everyone alive today.

 

 

The Boston Tea Party has been called the “point of no return” for the birth of democracy. The chain of events which was started by this act of civil disobedience on December 16, 1773 changed the future for the people in every nation on Earth today. This dramatic evening event has long been a target area in the growth of the Family Forest®.

 

There is a great site I recommend for learning about the Boston Tea Party itself. Then for a People-Centered Approach to History®, I recommend the best digital central source for generation-by-generation family ties leading to and from the Boston Tea Party, the Family Forest® New World Edition.

 

For instance, one of the participants married two of the daughters of Paul Revere, another one of the participants. You can follow their lines of descent to various families, including the Rockefellers.

 

Many Boston Tea Party descendants are scattered throughout the country today. Wouldn’t it be a great story to tell your grandchildren, if it turns out that you are one of them?

FamilyForest.com on NPR

Since I frequently enjoy listening to NPR, I was very surprised to discover today that

Alex Cohen had been talking on NPR  about the highly praised

Family Forest® Project back in October.

 

The story discusses the celebrity family ties of President Bush, and refers to

Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, John Kerry, Brooke Shields, Clint Eastwood,

Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and Walt Disney.

 

Maybe what surprised me the most was finding out that the chief family historian

at the genealogy goliath Ancestry.com, Megan Smolenya said she was surprised

to find out that someone had actually found some of these family ties. This shouldn’t

still be a secret in the genealogy community, as we have been posting many of these

and other fascinating ancestral history findings from the Family Forest® for a number

of years at our website and at our blog. 

 

My crystal ball says that before the 2008 Presidential Election most researchers

and international journalists will discover how much fun and how helpful it is to look in

the Family Forest® New World Edition to see the visual illustrations behind

these types of political stories, as well as countless celebrity stories and

general history stories.

 

 

Another Barack Obama Cousins Story

A news story began circulating Tuesday about Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama being distant cousins.

Anyone using the Family Forest® New World Edition from two years ago can instantly pull up a chart that illustrates, through generation-by-generation family ties, this supposedly new story.

The story fails to mention some of the other famous cousins Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama share through this common ancestor, early Maryland settler Mareen Duval.

Those other distant cousins include Harriet Miers (didn’t she receive special treatment from her cousin Dick Cheney’s boss earlier this year?), Wallis Warfield (the Duchess of Windsor), President Harry Truman, Paris Hilton, and Emmy award winning Hollywood actor Robert Duvall.

Second Lady Lynne Cheney does not mention that she is also a distant cousin of presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, and that one of their common ancestors built and lived in a castle. This information can be seen by following the links in Probably Your Castle.

More of Senator Barack Obama’s family ties to the White House can be found in a story from early this year about his presidential genes.

Stories like these are much more interesting when you use the Family Forest® to explore the visual illustrations which are behind these stories. In addition to many other “best of” claims it deserves, the Family Forest® New World Edition is the best digital central source for generation-by-generation ancestral pathways leading to and from the White House, and the presidential 2008 Election.