Where It All Went Wrong?

A perennial feature every campaign season is the release of genealogies supposedly demonstrating which kings, past presidents and vaguely familiar names presidential candidates are related to.

A lot of the work is done by genealogy hobbyists, sometimes assisted by the candidate’s own wild-ass claims. John McCain was recently called out for a bogus claim of descent from Robert The Bruce.

Hunt To Kill

And now Richard Nixon is nominated for historical orphanhood.

A long and lustrous line is shown for Nixon on Genealogy.com, but a critic hopes to chop it off in the 18th Century. Will Johnson says Genealogy.com grafted Nixon onto a family tree he has no business in.

Getting down in these weeds leads you to questions like: “The 1st and 2nd Baronet of Burton Agnes: dead-enders?”

“…the extinction of the baronetcy proves that neither Sir Henry 1st Baronet, nor Sir Henry 2nd Baronet had any surviving male- line issue. i.e. brothers, sons, nephews in the male line…[It] also disconnects Richard Nixon from this family. His ancestor, if he was indeed his ancestor at all, Samuel Griffith said-to-be “of Wigmore” who died in Maryland in 1717, does not belong to this family. “

If Nixon’s Genealogy.com ancestry held up he would be some sort of cousin to McCain and Obama . They are all supposed to be relatives of King Edward 1, famous for invading Scotland and expelling the Jews from England.

Father of Our Country