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Bruce and Kristine Harrison, publishers of
historical databases, traced back the family
histories of Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
The result? They're cousins.
Well, 16th cousins, three times removed, to be
exact. But cousins, nonetheless.
Truth be told, one might find such distant
family ties between Bush and any of the four other
major Democratic candidates.
The link between the president and the Rev. Al
Sharpton might date back a bit further, Bruce
Harrison said, but tracing ancestries helps
illuminate a greater message on human
interconnectedness, if not one on the
centrification of the nation's politics.
"I believe everybody on the planet is
related if you go back far enough," said
Harrison, 51, whose Millisecond Publishing in
Waimea on the Big Island puts out a line of
ancestral history CDs. He and his wife have spent
the last eight years compiling information from
hundreds of genealogical books and periodicals.
"We're setting the stage for others to
explore their curiosity," he said.
Harrison says the search through family trees
also turned up other big-name ancestors of Kerry
and Bush. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is the
president's ninth cousin, twice removed, while
Kerry can count Johnny Appleseed as his sixth
cousin, six times removed. Both the president and
the Massachusetts senator can claim ties to
figures ranging from Charlemagne to Walt Disney to
Marilyn Monroe, Harrison said.
For an average user of the Family Forest
software, it could be more difficult to find such
well-known links, but Harrison says he believes
everyone can find some ancestral information in
the database.
As for the political adversaries' kinship, the
only reunion in store seems to be a debate, should
Kerry win his party's nomination. A Bush campaign
spokeswoman said she had no comment on the issue.
A message left with Kerry's spokesman was not
returned.
The Honolulu County Genealogical Society's Mary
Ann Bolton said she was not too impressed with
those who troll family trees looking for
star-studded connections.
"I don't really put too much into
that," she said. "That's just bragging
rights."
Harrison said his motivation in finding the
link wasn't political, nor was it purely
curiosity. Since publicizing the Bush-Kerry
relation, the number of daily visits to his Web
site has more than tripled.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Bush, left, and Sen. John Kerry,
D-Mass., are also purportedly related to Walt
Disney and Marilyn Monroe.
ORIGINAL
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