You’ve probably heard the rumor. It pops up every few years on TikTok or some dusty genealogy forum: "All but one U.S. President are related to King John of England." It sounds like a conspiracy theory. It sounds fake. Honestly, it’s mostly true. If you dig into the American presidents family tree, you don't just find a list of names. You find a massive, tangled web of elite cousins that makes the "melting pot" of America look more like a private dinner party.
Ancestry is messy. We like to think of our leaders as self-made pioneers who rose from nothing. While that's true for some—think Andrew Jackson or Bill Clinton—the reality of the executive branch is often a game of "six degrees of separation." It turns out, if you have British royal blood, you're statistically way more likely to end up in the Oval Office.
The Royal Connection That Connects Everyone
In 2012, a 12-year-old girl named BridgeAnne d’Avignon made national headlines. She spent months tracing the lineages of every single U.S. President. Her goal? Prove they were all related to King John of England, the man who signed the Magna Carta in 1215. She actually did it. Well, almost. She found that 42 out of 43 presidents at the time were descendants of "John Lackland."
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Wait. How?
It’s about math. If you go back 800 years, your number of ancestors doubles every generation. Most people with Western European heritage are probably related to King John if they go back far enough. But what makes the American presidents family tree special is how directly these lines connect. We aren't talking about obscure 30th cousins twice removed in every case. Sometimes, the proximity is startling.
Take the 1932 election. You had Herbert Hoover running against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were actually fifth cousins. FDR wasn't just a distant relative of Teddy Roosevelt; he was his fifth cousin, and he married Teddy’s niece, Eleanor. They shared the same last name before the wedding. It stayed the same after.
When the Presidency Is a Family Business
Power loves company. We’ve had two sets of father-son duos: the Adamses and the Bushes. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the original dynasty. They were brilliant, prickly, and deeply suspicious of the "common man" democracy that eventually swept Andrew Jackson into power. Then you have the Bushes. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush represented a modern version of that same pedigree—East Coast elite meets Texas oil.
But the American presidents family tree gets weirder when you look at the inter-connectivity of different families.
Did you know James Madison and Zachary Taylor were second cousins? Or that Richard Nixon was a distant cousin of both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? It feels like the United States is less of a sprawling republic and more of a small town where the same five families keep winning the mayor’s office.
The Outliers: Who Doesn't Fit?
The one man who consistently breaks the "Royal Blood" streak is Martin Van Buren. He’s the odd one out. He was the first president born a U.S. citizen, but his first language was Dutch. His family tree doesn't lead back to the English throne. He was a true outsider in terms of genealogy, which is ironic considering he was one of the most masterful political "insiders" in history.
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The Genghis Khan Factor in American Politics
There is a concept in genealogy called "pedigree collapse." It’s the reason why, eventually, everyone’s family tree starts looking like a diamond instead of an expanding triangle. In the context of the American presidents family tree, this means that if you have deep colonial roots in Massachusetts or Virginia, you are almost certainly related to multiple presidents.
Genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts, who worked for the New England Historic Genealogical Society, spent decades proving this. His book, Ancestors of American Presidents, is basically the Bible for this stuff. He points out that if you have "gateway ancestors"—immigrants who were members of the gentry or nobility back in England—you are part of this web.
- George Washington was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II.
- Barack Obama is an 11th cousin of George W. Bush.
- Brad Pitt is a 9th cousin of Barack Obama.
- Tom Hanks is a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln (specifically through Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks).
It’s not just about the presidents. It’s about the entire American power structure. These connections aren't necessarily "secret societies" or plots for world domination. It's just what happens when a specific group of people—land-owning Europeans—arrives in a "new" world and spends 300 years marrying each other.
Why We Care About Presidential Lineage
Why does this matter? Honestly, for most of us, it’s just fun trivia. But for historians, the American presidents family tree provides a roadmap of how class and influence migrated across the continent.
Look at the "Virginia Dynasty." Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. They weren't just neighbors; they were part of a social fabric that dictated the early direction of the country. They shared books, they shared land, and yes, they shared DNA. When we look at the tree, we see the shift from the Virginia planters to the New England intellectuals, then eventually to the Western frontiersmen.
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Exploring Your Own Connection
Most people reading this are probably wondering if they have a branch on this tree. Statistically, if your family has been in the United States since the 1600s or 1700s, there is a very high probability you are a distant cousin of at least one president.
If you want to find out, don't just trust a random "family crest" website. Those are mostly scams. Instead, start with these specific steps to see where you fit into the broader American story:
Trace your "Gateways."
Look for ancestors who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony or Tidewater Virginia before 1650. If you find one, search their name alongside "presidential cousin." Most of the work has already been done by professional genealogists.
Focus on the "Y" and "mtDNA."
Commercial DNA tests like AncestryDNA or 23andMe are great for finding cousins, but for deep presidential links, you want to look at your haplogroups. This tells you about your ancient migratory path. While it won't tell you if you're George Washington's nephew, it confirms if you belong to the same broad genetic clusters as the Founding Fathers.
Check the "Famous Kin" databases.
Sites like FamousKin.com or the New England Historic Genealogical Society have massive, free-to-search databases that specifically link common surnames to the American presidents family tree.
Verify the Paper Trail.
DNA is only half the story. To "prove" a link that would hold up in a lineage society (like the Daughters of the American Revolution), you need birth, marriage, and death certificates for every single generation. This is where most people get stuck. A "John Smith" in 1810 isn't always the same "John Smith" who was born in 1780.
History isn't just a list of dates. It's a list of people. The fact that so many of our leaders share a common ancestor isn't a sign that the system is rigged—though some might argue that—but it is a reminder of how small the world actually is. We like to think of the presidents as statues or names on a page. In reality, they're just branches on a very old, very complicated tree that many of us are climbing right alongside them.