Obama, Palin, Coulter, and Reid

According to the AP

A genealogist at the Utah-based Ancestry.com, Anastasia Tyler, said Obama and Palin are 10th cousins through a common ancestor named John Smith, a pastor and early settler in 17th-century Massachusetts. Obama is related to Smith through his mother, as is Palin, Tyler said.
...
And one other thing from Ancestry.com: It also found that Palin is distant cousins with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter, through John Lathrop, who was exiled to the United States from England for being a pastor of an illegal independent church.

 The article points out a few other celebrity relationships.

Two major annoyances

1) Anastasia Tyler is NOT a genealogist.  She is a PR manager.
There is a difference, and since every article seems to call her a genealogist, I suspect she refers to herself as one in her press release. (Unsure, as the press release doesn't appear to be online.)

2) Never do these stories explain *how* the individuals are related beyond their common ancestor.  This makes the information completely useless to most people interested in family history.  It only is of interest to those who care which celebrities are related to which other celebrities, and don't care how.  Of course, it also means we can't check their work and prove them wrong.  Which might be why Ancestry.com doesn't release that information.

One way to name a kid

A Florida man has won £50 worth of petrol by agreeing to name his unborn son after a pair of radio DJs.

Source

At today's exchange rate, that's $100, and will buy 25 gallons of gas. At least if the guy had gotten the $100 in cash, he could have invested it in the kid's college fund. And in 18 years, perhaps it would have paid for a few textbooks.

I'm sure the guy didn't auction this off to the highest bidder.

Pedigree Collapse

TransylvanianDutch is going to take a break from our usual focii to present you a Tabloid News Exclusive!

Here's an excellent illustration of Pedigree Collapse:



These aren't all direct ancestors. I'm descended from Rev. Samuel Swayze's brother, Israel. So Barnabas Horton and Sarah Wines only appear once in my direct lines. However, a certain actor happens to be a direct descendant...

This isn't too uncommon. The whole idea of pedigree collapse is that it is common. It's still legal in some areas for first cousins to marry, and I certainly have no malicious intent, but for additional legal protection, and for the citations I'm sure some will want, here are the Descendants of Barnabas Horton, and the Ancestry of Patrick Swayze. All the people in that graphic above can be found on those two websites. It only takes the simplest of work to combine the two. Both sites cite sources for most of the information, so if any of it is incorrect, those sites should be contacted.

This has been a TransylvanianDutch Tabloid News Exclusive

(Note: It turns out I am not the first to discover this.)