A Candidate's Canard

John McCain claimed in his memoir Faith of My Fathers to be descended from Scottish king Robert the Bruce.

Asked by the Guardian to investigate McCain's family history, genealogists and medieval historians described the link to Robert the Bruce as "wonderful fiction" and "baloney".

Claims of Scottish medieval ancestry, [Dr. Katie Stevenson] said, are virtually impossible to prove unless traced through rare documentation. "There are no records of that nature. Any historian will tell you that it's virtually impossible to prove ancestry through the middle ages."

A spokesman for McCain said last night: "The ancestry claim is based upon a genealogical study the McCain family had in their possession, which traced the McCain family roots back to Robert the Bruce." [Link]

Not Enough Memories For a Memoir

The lead singer of the Rolling Stones has lived an interesting life—or so he's been told.

In the early 1980s, Mick Jagger snagged a $1.6 million advance from Bantam for his life story, but returned it several years later.

"We were told he said he couldn't remember enough to do a book," said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House Inc., which also owns Bantam. [Link, via The Daily Dish]

Her Kinfolks Were All Thumbs

Novelist Lisa Alther suspects that her family concealed its Melungeon heritage back when multiracial ancestry was frowned upon. While researching her memoir, Kinfolks: Falling off the Family Tree, she was able to confirm some facts about the bogeymen of her youth.

While growing up, she heard from a baby-sitter that Melungeons sported six fingers on each hand, all the better to "grab mean little children and carry them off to their caves in the cliffs outside of town."

This mythology was not entirely outlandish. As an adult, Alther's search led to Brent Kennedy, a respected Melungeon scholar and newfound cousin, in that they share the same grandmother's grandmother. He showed her the scars where his extra thumb on each hand had been removed. [Link]

Fiorello's Fascinating Sister

Here's something I didn't know: The mother of New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was Jewish, and his sister—born in Greenwich Village in 1881—was interned by the Nazis. The memoir Gemma LaGuardia Gluck wrote after her return to the United States in 1947 has been re-released 46 years after its first publication. It sounds like a great read for biography buffs.

While Gluck details her time at the Ravensbruck women's concentration camp with great clarity — she is believed to be the only American-born woman interned by the Nazis — the book is about more than that. Her life spanned the great wave of immigration to the United States in the 1880s to the presidency of John F. Kennedy. She grew up in New York City and the Old West, later led a cosmopolitan life in Budapest and lived her last years in a municipal housing project in Long Island City, Queens, built during her brother's term as mayor of New York City. [Link]

Six-Word Biographies

I enjoy reading autobiographies, but only if they're really, really short. So The Six-Word Memoir Contest is just what I've been looking for.

Everyone has a story. Can you tell yours in six words? Sure you can. Enter The Six-Word Memoir Contest—and you could win an iPod Nano.

Send us your short, short life story using the form below and sign up for a cool, new free service from Twitter. Then you'll get to read one great six-word memoir every day, sent straight to your cell phone.

As genealogists, we might try applying this concept to our ancestors. Some examples:

• "Kicked off Mayflower for counting cards."
• "Eighteen children, none of them attractive."
• "Thought he was a girl. Whoops!"
• "Killed by Indians. Probably deserved it."
• "Never could spell his name correctly."
• "Lived a virtuous life until executed."
• "Outlived three husbands. Was never convicted."
• "Accidentally shot by brother. Seven times."
• "Really, he was just following orders!"
• "Was born, married, died. Nothing else."

Feel free to offer your own ancestor bios in a comment below.

I'm Sure Jimmy Dislikes U2

From The Hill of Aug. 17, 2005:

Jesse Helms: Bono's my buddy

By Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour

Former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) considers Irish rock star Bono “an enormously impressive gentleman” and a friend of his and his wife’s.

So says the conservative icon in his memoirs, Here’s Where I Stand, due out late this month.

[snip]

Helms also puts to rest the rumor that he and President Carter were distantly related. “[A] careful tracing of the family tree,” he writes, revealed only a possibility that each of their ancestors were neighbors in rural North Carolina.

“It hasn’t always been clear which of us would have been less enthusiastic to see the other guy show up at a family reunion,” writes Helms, who retired after 30 years in the Senate and now lives with his wife, Dot, in Raleigh.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

This explains why President Carter's ancestors left North Carolina.