Presidential Lists

In honor of Barack Obama 's election to the US Presidency, I thought I'd share some Presidential trivia related to the man.

Obviously, Obama will be the first US President who is black. At one time, this nation revelled in the "one drop rule" - any black ancestors, and you are black. In this day and age, racial designation is somewhat more a matter of choice and of appearance. If you look black, and call yourself black, then you are. But, according to this website, we've had five or six other Presidents with some African ancestry:

• Thomas Jefferson


• Andrew Jackson


• Abraham Lincoln


• Warren Harding


• Calvin Coolidge


• Barack Obama


• (some sites also add William Clinton to this list)
  

Another short list Obama appears on is US Presidents with parents born outside of US boundaries:

• Andrew Jackson - mother and father were born in Ireland


• James Buchanan - father was born in Ireland, County Donegal


• Chester Arthur - father was born in Ireland, County Antrim


• Thomas Jefferson - mother was born in London, England


• Woodrow Wilson - mother was born in Carlisle, England


• Herbert Hoover - mother born in Ontario Canada


• Barack Obama - father born in Kenya

Finally, this wiki page lists many of the US presidents who were related. There are the obvious ones (the Bushes, the Adams, the Harrisons), but there are more distant relations, too. Just one example:

George H. W. Bush: fourth cousin five times removed of Millard Fillmore, fifth
cousin four times removed of Franklin Pierce, seventh cousin four times removed
of Abraham Lincoln, sixth cousin five times removed of Ulysses Grant, sixth
cousin three times removed of Rutherford Hayes, fourth cousin three times
removed of James Garfield, seventh cousin twice removed of Grover Cleveland,
seventh cousin three times removed of Theodore Roosevelt (also eighth cousin
twice removed of Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of Theodore), sixth cousin three
times removed of William Taft, sixth cousin twice removed of Calvin Coolidge,
tenth cousin of Herbert Hoover, sixth cousin three times removed of Franklin
Roosevelt, ninth cousin four times removed of Richard Nixon, seventh cousin of
Gerald Ford. Note that these relationships then also apply to George W. Bush,
each an additional generation removed.

Interestingly, Obama has his own connection of this sort. Though he doesn't seem to be related to any previous US President, he is the eighth cousin of Dick Cheney, through his mother's line.