Tag Archives: genealogy

The Times reports: JD Vance takes pride in declaring himself to be a “Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart” but a trawl of genealogy records has found no evidence linking the US vice-president to Ireland. In an attempt to link Vance to Ulster, a DUP minister commissioned researchers to dig into the ancestral past of the controversial Republican Party politician. A glossy …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: A year and a half ago, FamilySearch.org projected it would include same-sex parents and same-sex couples in its genealogy website sometime in 2019 — and it has, with three weeks to spare. The site, which is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced Tuesday that FamilySearch Family Tree now …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: Three years ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in every state, but the LDS Church still hasn’t listed same-sex couples in its massive genealogy databank. Not surprising, perhaps, given the Utah-based faith’s opposition to same-sex marriage. But change is coming to the genealogy resource — and soon. The church’s genealogical …

Britain’s future king has Indian ancestry on his late mother’s side, according to DNA analysis. The Indian Express reports: Prince William, second-in-line to the throne, will be first British king with proven Indian ancestry, DNA analysis has revealed. The DNA analysis of saliva samples taken from the Duke of Cambridge’s relatives have established a direct lineage between the 30-year-old prince …

The most-Irish metro area in the United States is Boston, with 20% of residents claiming Irish ancestry. The most-Irish zip code in the nation is in Breezy Point, Queens, at 54%. More stats: Twenty-two million Americans — 7.2% of the population — say their “primary ancestry” is Irish, according to the Census’s American Community Survey. Another 13.5 million Americans claim …

The Mormon Church-affiliated genealogy site Ancestry.com today made the claim that they have traced President Obama’s ancestry back to the very first documented slave in what would become the United States. That’s fascinating on its face, but the more interesting wrinkle here is that the connection is made through Obama’s white mother. Research derived by Ancestry.com from early Virginia records …

Here’s one of the best benefits of being a blogger I’ve had in a long time. In a post about the Super Bowl yesterday, I mentioned that my paternal grandfather had died in 1989. That prompted longtime JMG reader (and my real life pal) Homer, an avid genealogy hobbyist who lives in Tucson, to do some research on the Jervis …