Update to all presidents being related and descending from one English King. Statistical probability > conspiracy

I wanted to update the post that apparently, almost every U.S. president is related, except for two of them. At first, it sounded like one of those conspiracy theories, but after looking into it, I realized there might be more to it than I thought. The claim is that all U.S. presidents, except Martin Van Buren and Donald Trump, can trace their ancestry back to King John of England. King John is the guy who signed the Magna Carta

I actually first heard this on a podcast while at work and couldn’t stop thinking about it. It turns out a 12-year-old girl named BridgeAnne d’Avignon made headlines back in 2012 for researching this topic. She claimed that all presidents except Van Buren were connected to King John through a single ancestor. Considering the year explains why obamas face is in the middle as he was the current president at the time. Donald Trump was yet to be directly involved in politics so he wasn't included in her research but more modern analysis of this theory states he's had no relation. Some professional genealogists apparently backed up parts of her findings, pointing out that presidents like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have documented ties to European royalty. I thought that was fascinating, though I’m sure not all of it can be confirmed.

The theory works because a lot of early U.S. settlers came from England, Scotland, or Ireland. Many of them had noble roots, and since the population back then was small, their descendants often intermarried over time. A lot of presidents also came from families with deep roots in colonial America, and those families tended to be more connected than average. For example, King John had tons of descendants, both legitimate and illegitimate, who married into European noble families. Eventually, some of those families moved to America.

It’s worth noting that King John’s descendants likely include millions of people alive today, not just U.S. presidents. Turns out, It’s kinda like Genghis Khan, who reportedly has over 16 million descendants worldwide!! The same thing could be happening here due to how ancestry branches out exponentially. That said, it’s still interesting to see how many presidents came from families with ties to European nobility.

Of course, genealogical links this old aren’t always reliable. Records from medieval times can be incomplete or even straight up wrong, so a lot of this is more theoretical than factual. Also, just because someone is technically a “descendant” doesn’t mean there’s any significant connection, it’s really more of a statistical probability.

There are exceptions, though. Martin Van Buren, for example, was of Dutch descent and was the first president born after the American Revolution. His ancestry doesn’t link to King John. As for Donald Trump, his mother’s family is from Scotland, but no direct tie to King John has been found.

It’s pretty fascinating to think about how interconnected people might be, especially when you dig deep enough into history. After a deeper dive I think the whole “presidents are related” idea is more of a fun fact than anything meaningful. It really just goes to show how history works in strange and unexpected ways.