Family History

Interesting Family Background of First Ladies

Think the U.S. presidents have interesting ancestry? Their wives come from equally surprising bloodlines. Here are six first ladies with amazing family trees.

Hillary Clinton is related to Angelina Jolie.
According to a study by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie are ninth cousins twice removed. Their common ancestor is Jean Cusson of St. Sulpice, Quebec, a royal notary and court clerk who had 12 children and died in 1718. Clinton’s French-Canadian heritage also links her to Madonna, Celine Dion, and Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Meanwhile, President Obama is related to Jolie’s husband, Brad Pitt.

Michelle Obama has white ancestry.
DNA tests show that Michelle Obama (née Robinson) has a white ancestor and living distant white cousins. Her great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Shields, was a slave on a north Georgia farm in the 1850s. When she was 15, Melvinia had a child with her owner’s son, Charles Marion Shields. Their son, Dolphus, was born in 1860. It was no mystery that he was biracial: In the 1870 census above, Dolphus and two siblings are listed as mulatto. Obama’s ancestors eventually moved north to Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and Ohio. It is also likely that she has ancestors who were Jewish, Cherokee, and Irish.

Barbara Bush is a descendant of Franklin Pierce.
The former first lady is not the only one in her family to end up in public service. Born Barbara Pierce, her grandfather was an Ohio Supreme Court justice, and she is distantly related to Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States. When she learned as a child that Pierce had been one of the country’s weakest presidents, she said she was humiliated by this lineage. Her family tree also overlaps with Abigail Adams, another wife and mother to presidents, and stretches back to Henry Sampson, who came over on the Mayflower.

Jacqueline Kennedy had humble French and Irish origins.
Though she styled herself as a French aristocrat, Jacqueline Kennedy’s ancestry was actually rather modest. Her father’s family, the Bouviers, trumpeted a noble French lineage, alleging that they were part of the ancient house of Fontaine. In fact, they were the descendants of artisans and shopkeepers near Arles — one of whom, Michael Bouvier, moved to America in 1815 and worked as a cabinetmaker in Philadelphia, according to the 1870 census above. Her mother’s side came from County Clare in Ireland. A genealogist recently found that all eight of her maternal great-great grandparents were born in Ireland, as were two of her great-grandparents.

Roosevelts
Eleanor Roosevelt was related to her husband.
The Roosevelts have been in the United States since Dutch times, when Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt emigrated from Holland to New Amsterdam in the 1640s. His two grandsons, Johannes and Jacobus, began separate branches of the family, one in Oyster Bay and the other in Hyde Park, New York. Along with her uncle Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor came from the Oyster Bay side. Franklin came from the Hyde Park side. This lineage makes them fifth cousins, once removed.

Edith Wilson was a direct descendant of Pocahontas.
In 1614, Pocahontas married John Rolfe, one of the settlers of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. They had a son, Thomas, whose grandson was John Bolling. Six generations later, Edith Bolling — the future Mrs. Woodrow Wilson — was born in 1872. The Wilsons met after both had been widowed, marrying nine months later in 1915. That’s not Edith’s only presidential connection: She was also the great-great-great-niece of Thomas Jefferson. His sister, Mary Jefferson Bolling, was “a lady of great refinement and beauty,” according to the family history in “Some Prominent Virginia Families” on Ancestry.