02 August 2019
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Boris Johnson
New research by Gary Boyd Roberts of American Ancestors explores the family tree of UK prime minister Boris Johnson – and has uncovered the PM’s American ancestry.
New research by Gary Boyd Roberts of American Ancestors explores the ancestry of UK prime minister Boris Johnson – and has uncovered the PM’s American ancestry.
The findings show that Boris Johnson has family connections with these ten US presidents:
1. Ulysses S Grant (1822-85)
2. Rutherford B Hayes (1822-93)
3. Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)
4. William Howard Taft (1857-1930)
5. Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)
6. Franklin D Roosevelt (1882-1945)
7. Richard Nixon (1913-94)
8. Gerald Ford (1913-2006)
9. George H W Bush (1924-2018)
10 George W Bush (1946-present)
Mr Robert’s research also revealed that the prime minister’s mother Charlotte Offlow Fawcett was a daughter of Sir James Edmund Sandford Fawcett (president of the European Commission of Human Rights) and Frances Beatrice Lowe (daughter of palaeographer Professor Elias Avery Lowe).
Boris Johnson’s US ancestry
The research shows that Boris’s American ancestry is rooted in New England, particularly in Connecticut and Massachusetts, including a 17th-century Connecticut immigrant of royal descent: Elizabeth Alsop Baldwin.
Boris’s great-grandmother on his mother’s side was Helen Tracy Porter, who used the surname Lowe-Porter and was the first English language translator of Thomas Mann. Helen’s parents Henry Clinton Porter Junior and Clara Holcomb lived in Towanda, Bradford County, Pennsylvania and their ancestry was New England or Long Island Yankee, Gary Boyd Roberts reveals.
Helen’s eight great-grandparents had the surnames:
- Porter
- Frisbie (see below illustration)
- Betts
- Warner
- Holcomb
- Bailey
- Noble
- Tracy
Among the maternal Frisbie ancestors, Elizabeth Alsop Baldwin was a 3 x great-granddaughter of Alice Boleyn, wife of Sir Robert Clere and aunt of Anne Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth I.
Gary Boyd Roberts is Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at American Ancestors, also known as the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Image copyright Gov.UK