Thaindian News

Washington, Jan. 30 (ANI): As if losing his US Senate super majority to a Republican was not bad enough, American genealogists have prepared another shocker for President Barack Obama: that Scott Brown, the newly elected senator from Massachusetts, is Obama’s cousin.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society has revealed that Obama and Brown are 10th cousins.

Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Brown’s mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill of Massachusetts, who died in 1687 aged102.

“I think it’s a really interesting thing, where you have the separation between a Democrat and a Republican, but you have one link,” The Sun quoted David Allen Lambert of the society, as saying.

Lambert said the work would not have been possible without Brown’s cooperation with the society when researchers first contacted him in December.

“I’m glad to be in such distinguished company,” Brown said of the findings.

In 2008, the society discovered that Obama is related to seven prior presidents, including George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison. They also learned he was related to Hollywood actor Brad Pitt.

Brown, once a little-known state senator, came into the political spotlight after winning the Senate seat held for nearly a half-century by the late Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. (ANI)