• On the 12th of March 1947, Willard Mitt Romney was born
in Detroit, Michigan to George W. Romney and Lenore Romney. 

• He was named after his father's best friend and hotel
magnate, J Willard Marriott and he owes his middle name to his
father'?s cousin Milton 'Mitt' Romney, a former Chicago Bears
quarterback.

• Romney's illustrious father is a former three-term
Governor of Michigan, Chairman of American Motors and a 1968
presidential candidate while his mother is a 1970 Michigan U.S
Senatorial candidate.

• Though he was born into a humble background, Romney's
father became a wealthy national figure by successfully hauling
American Motors from the depths of bankruptcy.

• The Romneys were one of the few leading families of the
Mormon faith in middle-class America and for nearly a century,
adherents to the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints
were regarded as polygamous outlaws.

• Romney's great-great-grandfather, Miles Romney, was an
architect in England who sacrificed his career to follow the
steps of the Mormons, trek the Midwest and settle with his family
in Utah. 

• His great-grandfather was among those Mormons who fled
to Mexico to start their own community where plural marriage
continued to be practiced.

• Romney's family tree is rife with polygamists on the
paternal side though there is no indication of polygamy on the
maternal side of his family. According to a research by The Salt
Lake Tribune, Romney's ancestry harbors six polygamous men with
forty-one wives.

• Romney, however, is a confirmed monogamist and polygamy
has been absent in his family background up to two generations.
		

• On the 4th of August 1961, Barack Hussein Obama was born
in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr.
and an American mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

• Obama highlights thus, the diversity of his family tree:
"It's like a little mini-United Nations. I've got relatives who
look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like
Margaret Thatcher".

• Obama's parents met in 1960 at the University of Hawaii
and married in 1961 but soon divorced. Obama's father moved to
Connecticut before returning to Kenya, where he remarried and had
two more sons, David Ndesandjo and Mark Ndesandjo. Obama's mother
remarried an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro and the family moved to
Indonesia along with Obama and his half-sister Maya Soetoro.

• In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his
maternal grandparents, Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn, one of
the first female Vice-Presidents of the Bank of Hawaii. 

• Obama's maternal heritage consists mostly of English
ancestry, with traces of German, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Swiss
and French ancestry. His maternal grandfather is related to James
Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W.
Bush and George W. Bush, who were all U.S presidents.

• Obama's paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama was
a Christian mission cook and herbalist who later embraced Islam.
Being an avid traveler, he had visited Europe, India and Zanzibar
while he was recruited to fight for colonial power England during
World War I.

• On his paternal side, Obama's lineage can be traced back
to the early descendants of the Luo tribal king.


• According 1850 Census records from Kentucky, Barack
Obama's great-great-great-great grandfather, George Washington
Overall, owned two slaves, a 15 year-old girl and a 25-year-old
man. The same records show that one of Obama's
great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also
owned two black slaves, a 60 year-old man and a 58 year-old
woman.