Last week, the
New England Historic Genealogical Society issued a press release that it knew would get some bounce: the group said it had traced the ancestry of the presidential candidates and found that all of them had blood ties — albeit distant ones — to unlikely famous people.
Left: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times - Right: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Recent genealogical research says Barack Obama is related — distantly — to George W. Bush.
Barack Obama, the group said, is related to George W. Bush and Brad Pitt. Hillary Rodham Clinton can claim Angelina Jolie, Jack Kerouac and Camilla Parker-Bowles. As for John McCain, who knew he was descended from William the Lion, King of Scots?
However distant the connections (ninth cousins?), the news sped across the Internet, prompting countless people to wonder: could I be related to someone important, too?
“We’ve literally been overwhelmed for days, which is great,” said D. Brenton Simons, chief executive of the society, a 163-year-old Boston institution on Newbury Street near the Public Garden. “For us to have exposure as an important national organization has been very helpful.”
In other words, the revelations did what they were meant to do, which was to spread a little publicity for a nonprofit group that revels in historic minutia (the home page of its Web site, under the category “What’s New?” boasts of having the vital records for East Granby, Conn., from 1737 to 1886).
Mr. Simons said the increased interest, which overloaded the society’s Web servers, could bolster membership, which hovers around 23,000. He said he had been inundated with e-mail traffic from around the world, some from people claiming to be related to a presidential candidate or a notable figure. But most asked a simple question: to whom could I be related?
“I think it’s amusing,” Mr. Simons said. “It doesn’t mean much in and of itself. The bigger message is that you know something about an ancestor that you and Angelina Jolie share.”
Some genealogists shrugged their shoulders at the connections, pointing out that if we look hard enough, most of us are related to one another somehow. If the average person goes back 400 years, he or she has around 130,000 relatives, said Chris Child, a genealogist at the society who worked on the candidates’ lineages.
“Everybody thinks it’s unique. It really isn’t,” said Dick Eastman, who runs a genealogy newsletter. “It would be a much more impressive news story if researchers could positively prove that any two public figures are NOT related to each other.” CATE DOTY
译文:
总统竞选者之间的六度关系
上周,
新英格兰历史家族协会召开了一个记者招待会. 这一组织说,他们已追踪了总统候选人的家族史,发现他们或多或少于名人都有血缘关系.这则消息引起了剧烈反响.
最近,家族研究显示,巴拉克奥巴马和乔治布什也有些遥远的关系.
该组织说, 巴拉克奥巴马与乔治布什和布拉德彼特都有关系. 希拉里克灵顿则与安吉利娜朱丽,杰克凯鲁亚特,卡米拉.帕克鲍尔斯有关系. 至于约翰麦凯恩, 谁都知道他是苏格兰国王威廉一世的后代.
无论这些关系有多么遥远,这则消息一在网上传播,就应起了无数人的好奇:我会不会也和某个重要人物有联系呢?
该组织是个有163年历史波士顿机构,坐落在大众公园旁的纽伯利大街上,它的首席执行官,布莱顿西蒙斯说,因为我们不断暴露成为一个重要的国际组织,这很有用,这是我们这些天来忙不过来了.
换句话说,这些关系确实达到了他们预期的希望.该组织揭示的一些历史细节使他们赢得了公众的关注.(在他们主页上”what’s new”目录下,记录着东格兰比从1737年到1886年的重要历史.
西蒙斯先生说,人们的兴趣是网站服务器超负荷运转,同时,他们的会员量也会增加至23000人左右.他说,他已收到了世界各地如洪水泛滥般的电子邮件,有些人声称自己和某个总统候选人或名人有关系.但更多的人都问了同一个问题:我会和谁有关系呢?
西蒙斯先生说,我觉得这很有趣,这件事本身并不能说明什么.但传达出来的重要信息是,你知道了你的祖先和安吉利娜朱丽有点共同之处.
但有些家族史专家当谈到这些关系时,他们只是耸耸肩说,如果你仔细看的话,会发现大多数人多少都会和其他人有点关系.一位就研究总统候选人家史的家族史专家,克里斯查尔德说,如果追述到400多年前,他或她可能有超过13000多个亲戚.
一个家族传报的经营者,迪克依斯特蒙说,每个人都觉得这很稀罕,不是吗?如果研究者能证明哪个公众人物间没有任何联系,这才真是条惊人的消息吧.