Family History Makes Strange Bedfellows

Next November, cousins Mark Udall and Tom Udall will be running for the Senate, and their second cousin, Gordon Smith, will be running for reelection to the same body. The Udalls are Democrats, Smith a Republican.

The Udalls are descendants of one David King Udall, who as a year-old child was brought by his parents on the trek to Utah led by Brigham Young. As a young man, he was sent to Arizona and lived to be president of the Mormons' Mesa, Ariz., temple until 1934.

Having taken two wives, David Udall ran afoul of territorial law enforcement officials in the 1880s. He served a brief term for perjury, having to do with an affidavit filed on a land claim by one Miles Romney -- Mitt Romney's great-grandfather.

Baron Goldwater, uncle of the future senator and father of modern conservatism, bailed David Udall out of jail. [Link]

Romney's a Deserter's Descendant

Genealogical muckraking is again rocking the world of presidential politics.

[E]xactly 150 years ago, an ancestor of Mitt Romney deserted from U.S. Army troops sent to put down a purported Mormon rebellion in Utah.

Carl Heinrich (Charles Henry) Wilcken, Romney's great-great-grandfather, would give Mormons information about approaching troops, eventually joined the LDS Church and ultimately became a bodyguard and confidant of two church presidents.

The middle name of Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George W. Romney (also once a presidential candidate), is Wilcken, after that soldier-ancestor. [Link]

Mitt's Mexican Cousin

Today's Boston Globe has a story about the side of the Romney family that remained in Mexico after Mitt's ancestors returned to America.

Mike Romney, a school administrator in this small town in the Mexican desert, and Mitt Romney, a candidate for president of the United States, have never met.

But the two distant cousins are just a year apart in age, and both are descendants of the same great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, who fled the United States and, at the direction of church leaders, helped create this colony 122 years ago as a refuge for polygamous Mormons. [Link]

Campaign Rocked by Immigration Scandal

The records of U.S.-Mexico Border Crossings recently put online by Ancestry.com reveal something shocking about a certain presidential candidate whose father was born in Mexico.

Ancestry.com couldn't locate records showing when Mitt Romney's parents and grandparents returned to the United States to live.... [Link]

Before you get alarmed, let me assure you that I have already notified the Department of Homeland Security about this situation, and that proceedings are underway to deport Mr. Romney and his fence-jumping family back to Chihuahua.

President Bush has weighed in on the issue, saying that if Congress would promptly institute his guest-worker program, the Romneys could stay in this country and do the jobs that Americans don't want to do—like picking lettuce and talking to Bill O'Reilly.

The Sins of the Great-Grandfather

Among the weighty issues being debated in the press are whether Barack Obama is black enough to be president, and whether Mitt Romney's great-grandfather is fit to be the great-grandfather of a president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages. [Link]

Governor Cracks Down on Sensible Record-Keeping

From New York Newsday:

Romney Instructs Hospitals on Birth Papers

By Associated Press

July 22, 2005, 12:23 PM EDT

BOSTON -- The governor's office has instructed hospitals to cross out the word "father" on birth certificates for children of same-sex parents and substitute "second parent," angering municipal clerks.

Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Gov. Mitt Romney, said Thursday that the certificates are perfectly legal.

But municipal clerks, who register and store birth records, say the cross-outs could leave the documents open to challenges by passport agents, foreign governments and other officials.

"They should not have a birth certificate that has crosses on it," said Barnstable Town Clerk Linda E. Hutchenrider, a past president of the Massachusetts Town Clerks Association. "They should be allowed to have a birth certificate that really looks valid."

[Read the whole story]

Some might say that Romney is a son of a XXXXX. For my thoughts on how the kids of same-sex couples should be treated, see my previous post, Leave Genealogy Out of It.