Family in High Places

      Some people do genealogy to establish regal ancestry or connect themselves to grandees from the past. I think this is a frivolous and futile pursuit, and not a very good reason for inquiring into one’s roots. The English theologian Bishop William Warburton (1698-1779) commented on the ambiguous meaning of such connections: “High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.” I therefore regard the following discovery, upon which I stumbled while researching an entirely separate and mundane topic, as obliquely relevant yet quite amusing: the President of the United States and I are distant kinfolk.
      Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., is my eighth cousin twice-removed on my paternal grandmother’s side. His seventh-great-grandparents and my ninth-great-grandparents were John Browning (1728-1803) and Elizabeth Demarest (1725-1774). John was born in Virginia and moved to Wilkes County, Georgia, following the death of his wife, who hailed from Delaware and passed away in North Carolina. I descend from their daughter Phebe Browning (1762-1857), and the President comes from her older brother James Browning (1745-1812). This news will scandalize some and delight others in my family, but I am confident it will be received by the White House with universal acclaim. I look forward to celebrating Christmas with my long-lost relations.