INTRODUCTION
HILLARY RODHAM
CLINTON
Of Politics and Genealogy: US Edition
Interestingly, Senator Clinton’s ancestry is also as
colorful as Obama’s, though not as diverse as his. While Obama’s relatives
include people from the arts, politics, banking and finance, business, the
Mormon church, and even royalty, Clinton’s are more concentrated on two
areas: politics and the arts. (Click here for Clinton’s pedigree chart)
Her
political relatives include Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien
of Canada. Other than these two popular Canadian politicians, most of
Hillary’s more popular relatives are from the entertainment industry. Shania
Twain is her 9th cousin three times removed, Celine Dion is her 10th cousin
once removed, Alanis Morissette is her tenth cousin, while Madonna
and Clinton are 10th cousins. Three very interesting notes on
Hilary’s genealogy: her royal antecedents are supposed to be the Kings of
Navarre, but there are no exact evidences for that; she is also a 10th cousin of Camila Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall and wife
of Prince Charles; and, finally, actor Jon Voight is the husband of
Marcheline Bertrand [and father of Angelina
Jolie], Hillary’s 9th cousin once removed.
This article is
based on several online genealogies of the three candidates, the most
comprehensive of which is http://www.wargs.com/political.
The Ancestors of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (b.
1947)
[...]
2030 (=2042) Jean
Guyon, sieur DuBuisson
~
St-Jean-de-Mortagne, Chartres ou Sees, Perche [now Orne], France, 1 Aug.
1619
+ Château-Richer,
Québec, 14 Jan. 1694
m.
Québec, Québec, 27 Nov. 1645
|
Wikipedia
"...'Bush,' which
comes from a translation of the family name du
Buisson."
Jean Guyon (1592 - 1663) links to
Zacharie Cloutier [translated text]
Zechariah, along with Jean
Guyon, the future of Mr. Bush, embarked on March 14, 1634 at Mortagne by
Robert Giffard to move faraway New France. ...
Jean Guyon is all religious
festivals and popular. Thus, the Journal of the Jesuits taught us that
when Corpus Christi in 1646, it works with another migrant percheron Zacharie
Cloutier celebrated at the head of the procession, and that, on the
occasion of the marriage of Jean Guyon du Buisson, the eldest son of the
pioneer, with Elisabeth Couillard, "there were two violins to the wedding,
which had not yet been seen in Canada."
Jean Guyon décéde May 30, 1663;
Mathurine Robin had preceded it in the grave a year earlier on April 17,
1662.
Over the centuries, their children
and descendants have given birth to generations of Guyon, or become
Guion Dion. Elles se sont installées au Québec, au Canada et aux Etats-Unis.
They have settled in Quebec, Canada and the United States.
In 1730, in line Guyon 2150, which puts it thus at the
forefront of French families of America.
238 years later, on March 30, 1968 Celine Dion was born.
See: George
W. Bush Jewish lineage;
HEEDING BIBLE PROPHECY: Dragon Court: G.W.
Bush Merovingian Lineage
RootsWeb: Guyon-L Archives
The website that lists the Jewish
Guyons is: JewishGen.com / [sic]
JewishGen.org
“The Guyon line
suddenly appears around 1500. That is a time when many Merranos (Jewish families hiding their faith/identity by
outwardly joining the Catholic church) flooded into France, mostly
from Spain and Portugal. It is merely a possibility but 'Guyon is close to
the Hebrew family name 'Dayan' which means 'Judge. 'Dayan' was changed
to'Dion' by Jewish families who fled to Russia centuries ago. This family
line still exhists today (descendants of the tribe of
Dan).”
Tribe of Dan / Tuatha de Danaan
= Merovingian Dynasty
“Through the work of Sir Laurence Gardener we discover that Sumaire
in the old Irish language means Dragon. He writes:
‘It
is also reckoned that the subsequent culture of the region,
phonetically called Sumerian (pronounced
‘Shumerian’)
was actually Sidhemurian (Shee-murian). This case is now
considerable since the early Ring Lords of Scythia (the
Tuatha De Danaan king tribe) were actually called the
‘Sumaire’.’
“During the days of the Biblical Great Exodus, a group
separated from Moses and went to the North. This group was the
Tribe of Dann. Millions went and settled in the European and
Scandinavian areas. From there they spread out to other parts of the
world...conquering the countries, spreading their Anunnaki seed and
replacing the conquered people’s
traditions with their own serpent culture.” (“The
Tribe of Dann and the Lost Tribe of Israel”)
SEE ALSO:
THE LOST TRIBE OF DAN
HEEDING BIBLE PROPHECY: new
government; tribe of judah/dan;
mount hermon/sion
|
Candidates'
Relations
6.
Clinton and Jack Kerouac, eighth cousins, once removed. They both descend
from Jean Guyon, who died in Quebec, Canada, in
the 17th century.
7.
Clinton and Camilla Parker-Bowles, ninth cousins, once removed. They both
descend from Jean Guyon, of Quebec, Canada.
9.
Hillary Clinton and Celine Dion, tenth cousins, once removed. Both are
descendants of Jean Guyon, from Quebec, Canada.
The
Ancestors of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)
by William
Addams Reitwiesner
In her autobiography, Living History, Sen.
Clinton describes her maternal grandmother as "one of nine children from a
family of French Canadian, Scottish and Native American ancestry". No
records have been found to support this claimed Native American
ancestry.
Hillary, Meet Your New Cousins: Angelina and
Madonna
Washington genealogist William Addams
Reitwiesner uncovered the ties, reports The Washington Post's Reliable
Source column.
It turns out the Democratic presidential candidate,
Hillary Clinton, 60, and the Material Girl, MaDonna
[The
Black Madonna], 49, are 10th cousins. They share the same
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents –
17th-century French ancestors who moved to Quebec and then came
south.
The former First Lady can also count Jolie, 32, as a ninth
cousin, twice removed.
Friday August 13, 1999
Hillary has Jews in her family, but will it affect her
campaign?
MATTHEW DORF
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON
-- "OY VEY!" the New York Post blared across its front page in 3-inch
letters last week.
"Hillary's ALMOST Jewish."
An accompanying column carried the headline, "The
First Shiksa wants to be a yenta? Oy!"
New York's supercharged Senate
campaign took a distinctly Jewish turn last week when the Forward, a weekly
Jewish newspaper, reported that Clinton has some Jews on her family tree.
Her step-grandfather was Jewish and her mother's half-sister
converted.
The Forward called Clinton's grandmother, Della
Rosenberg, "the feisty wife of a Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrant" and
predicted that the revelation would boost her Senate chances.
But even if Clinton were Jewish, her background would
not influence Jewish voters, according to pollsters, analysts and
politicians.
"Ethnicity has very little to do with how Jews vote," said
John Zogby, president of Zogby International, a New York-based polling firm
that has conducted many surveys of Jewish voters.
"Basically those who really viscerally dislike
Hillary will add another notch in the column and ask, 'What's she trying to
do?'" Zogby said.
And those who support her will ignore the issue, he
said.
To be sure, Clinton has made courting Jewish voters a
central focus of her campaign. One out of every eight voters in New York is
Jewish, making them a key constituency in her campaign.
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch tried to put the
revelation into perspective.
"I think it's much ado about nothing," he said Sunday
on ABC's "This Week" news show.
"I'm a proud member of the Jewish faith, and it would
be wonderful if Hillary were Jewish. But she's not," Koch said.
According to the Forward, Clinton's maternal
grandmother, Della Murray, divorced her husband in 1927 and remarried Max
Rosenberg in 1933. Together they had a daughter, Adeline.
Like many activists from both parties, Koch said it
"means nothing" that Clinton has Jewish relatives.
"Jews don't vote,
normally, on the basis of ethnicity," Koch said.
While the impact of the story is not fully known,
pollsters are watching the Jewish vote carefully. Zogby predicts that the
winner of the Jewish vote will win the election.
A compilation of Zogby polls over the last eight
months released this week shows New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani leading
Clinton, 43.9 percent to 41.8 percent, among Jewish voters.
The sample of 678 Jewish voters, with a margin of
error of plus or minus 4 percent, has 14.3 percent undecided. Among all
voters, Giuliani leads Clinton by 46.9 to 41.7 percent, Zogby
said.
"Hillary is not doing as well among Jewish voters as
a Democrat normally would do," Zogby said.
At the same time, Giuliani does better among Jewish
voters than a Republican normally would, he said.
In 1996, Republican Party leaders supported the
Senate bid of Dick Zimmer, a New Jersey Republican, in part because he is
Jewish. But when the votes were counted, his opponent, Sen. Robert
Torricelli (D-N.J.), received almost 80 percent of the Jewish vote,
according to exit polls conducted by Zogby for the New Jersey Jewish News.
New Jersey's other senator, Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat who is Jewish,
received less Jewish support than Torricelli did in his last election, polls
showed.
In other recent races, Rep. Jon Fox, a Jewish
Republican from suburban Philadelphia, received an estimated 25 percent of
the Jewish vote in his losing 1998 battle for re-election against Rep. Joe
Hoeffel (D-Pa.). And in New York, some 70 percent of Jewish voters supported
Giuliani in his race against Ruth Messinger, a Jewish Democrat.
"Because someone married someone Jewish three decades
ago is not particularly relevant," said Matt Brooks, executive director of
the Republican Jewish Coalition. He added that the revelation is simply "a
humorous one-day anecdotal story."
Max Rosenberg
FORWARD :
News
www.forward.com/BACK/1999/99.0 - [Cached]
Published on: 9/10/2000
Last Visited: 9/10/2000
Asked about Max Rosenberg, a spokesman for
Mrs. Clinton's Senate exploratory committee, Howard Wolfson, said the first
lady has very fond memories of him.
...
Enter Max Rosenberg. Born in
1901 in Russia, the son of Joseph and Mollie, by 1933 Max Rosenberg had made
his way to Chicago, where he married Della Murray. A city court judge
performed the ceremony, according to a copy of the marriage license. His
mother, Mollie, was a member of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the
Sisterhood of Agudas Achim North Shore congregation, according to a death
notice published in The Chicago Tribune. Mollie was a subscriber to the
Yiddish Forward, according to court records of her estate. (A Chicago
attorney and genealogist, Charles Bernstein, assisted the Forward with the
documentary research for this article.).
The backdrop of Max and
Della Rosenberg's life puts some aspects of the first lady's relationship
with Jews into a new light. Some of her oldest and closest friends and
associates include Jewish women -- Sara Ehrman, Ann Lewis, Patty
Kenner.
Hillary Clinton's Jewish Family Ties Unearthed
South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Jews back Clinton in super way
Staff and wire
reports
March 27, 2008
TALLAHASSEE
WASHINGTON
A disproportionate share of the
Democratic super delegates — the people who may ultimately decide who gets
the party's presidential campaign — are Jewish. And, a new survey shows,
many are supporting Hillary Clinton.
More than 70 of the 800 super
delegates are Jewish.
At this point, 36 have declared
their support for Clinton. That includes U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
D-Weston, a national co-chairwoman of the Clinton
campaign.
Another 12 are supporting Barack Obama. That
includes U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, Florida co-chairman for
Obama.
And 26 are undeclared.
Undeclared Jewish super delegates from South Florida are U.S. Rep. Ron
Klein, D-Boca Raton; Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar; and Diane
Glasser of Tamarac, vice chairwoman of the state Democratic
Party.
The information comes from a survey and
analysis conducted by the Forward, the influential and well-known Jewish
newspaper.
The Forward concluded that "Jewish insiders
could play an outsized role in anointing a nominee" if the nomination ends
up being determined by super delegates. — Anthony Man
Clinton-Madonna-Pellicano-Kabbalah: Africa
Connection
Wednesday, October
18, 2006
By Roger
Friedman
Fox News
Can you connect these dots? Madonna-Bill
Clinton-Kabbalah-Anthony Pellicano and ...
Africa?
Madonna’s disastrous public-relations effort in the
small African country of Malawi only gets worse. I can tell you that she has
started a new charitable foundation, Raising Malawi, to help orphans in that
country, but that the whole thing is a front for the
Kabbalah Centre in Hollywood.
To compound matters, Clinton's own foundation is
right there on Madge's new Web site as her No. 1 supporter. The Clinton Foundation is the only one of Raising Malawi’s
listed partners to have a usable link on the Web site. But the chief
individual benefactress is the second wife of a Hollywood billionaire who
hired jailed private detective Pellicano to spy on his first
wife.
Don’t the people of Malawi have enough
trouble?
The charity, Raising Malawi, is designed to spread
the word of Philip Berg’s Kabbalah
Centre, his own version of Kabbalah beliefs and mysticism,
through Malawi’s orphaned children.
Indeed, the Web site for Raising Malawi, the new
charity, tells the whole story. The entire organization is run by the Bergs
as a kind of missionary program for Africa, with Madonna
as the leading proselytizer.
Madonna is already suffering
worldwide criticism this week for taking a child away from its father and
“adopting” it against Malawi law. Some say she’s “bought” a 1-year-old boy
named David, and Tuesday there was news that she whisked the child out of
Malawi under the cloak of secrecy. There is fresh news Wednesday that now
Madonna may even want a Malawian girl to add to her collection.
But now it seems that the
charity she’s set up in Malawi is just the infamous Kabbalah Centre of
Hollywood under a different name. The listed founders of Raising Malawi are
Michael and Monica Berg. He is described as the son of Philip
Berg, founder of the Kabbalah Centre.
“In addition to physical
support,” his bio reads, “Michael is committed to providing psychosocial
relief through the Spirituality for Kids curriculum.” The latter
organization is essentially Kabbalah for children, a group that Madonna
endorses. The proceeds from her children’s books went to that branch of
Berg’s organization.
Raising Malawi is run entirely
by Spirituality for Kids, or Kabbalah, according to the site. Other leaders
including SK’s Director of Development Philippe van
den Bossche, SK’s Director of Research and Global Training Dr. Heath Grant,and “philanthropist” Hedi Gores, wife of Beverly Hills “barely a
billionaire” leveraged-buyout king Alec
Gores, who runs Gores Technology Group. (continued)
Middle East studies in the News
Clinton's
Arab Connections Why Aren't People Talking About It?
Yid with Lid
Blog
January 22, 2008
[excerpt]
No one is as involved as to the extent of the
Clintons. According to San Francisco Examiner columnist P.J. Corkery,
Clinton makes $10 million a year from Yucaipa a Dubai firm. Ron Berkle, the
owner of Yucaipa companies and a major fund-raiser for Bill and Hillary.
And then there is the Clinton connection to the
world's biggest exporter of terrorism, Saudi Arabia:
Hillary Clinton and Saudi Funny Money: Conflict of
Interest?[link]
There's been a lot of talk, going back to the
presidency of Bush 41, of the Bush family's ties to Saudi Arabia.
Saturday, March 4, 2006 2:02 p.m. EST
Dick Morris: Clinton on Dubai
Payroll
Former President Bill Clinton is up to
his eyeballs in dealings with Dubai, his former top political adviser has
revealed.
According to Dick Morris, author of the
best-selling book, "Condi vs, Hillary," Clinton is a paid agent of the crown
prince of Dubai, now involved in a firestorm over its deal to take over some
of the operations at six major U.S. ports.
"Bill
Clinton is a senior adviser - a paid adviser - to a company called Yucaipa
which recently set up a relationship with a group called the Yucaipa
Investment group to set up a new company called DIGL," Morris said on "The
O'Reilly Factor."
"DIGL Inc. is in charge of managing
the investments of the crown prince of Dubai throughout the world. Bill
Clinton is paid by Yucaipa a percentage of the profits it makes, and Yucaipa
said its profits have exceeded 40 percent in recent
years.
"He is a paid agent of the crown prince of
Dubai. That in addition to the roughly million dollars they gave his
library, in addition to the probably $600,000 in speaking fees he got, and
in addition to the scholarships for Dubai children they endowed through his
library. (Continued)
The Clintons on Dubai
By Robert D. Novak
CNSNews.com
Commentary
March 02, 2006
Bill Clinton to make $20 million from Dubai-sleeping with the
enemy-Now you know why Hillary will not show tax returns!!
Posted by
allysonrt on January 23, 2008
Bill Clinton will get $20 million when
he divorces Los Angeles supermarket magnate and (alleged) Radar owner Ron
Burkle, his business partner of six years, The Wall Street Journal told us
this morning. The reason for the split, it seems, is that Burkle’s Yupaica
company, for which Clinton was an adviser, can’t seem to stay away from
people who could harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. For example?
Italian developer Raffaello Follieri and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid
al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and one of the owners behind Xinhua Finance
Media Ltd., a Beijing–based news company with close ties to the Communist
government of China, which just gave Yucaipa a little cash infusion.
Basically, Burkle loves sketchy investments like Eric Benet loved sex with
groupies, and at this point in the election and his life, Clinton can’t take
the drama. “I love you, but I need to take care of myself,” we imagine him
saying to Burkle. “No more drama in my life.” Despite Burkle’s
transgressions, the breakup appears to be amicable: A Clinton spokesperson
speaks to the Journal not of a SPLIT!!! but “an appropriate transition” out
of their business relationship, and Burkle remains a finance chair on
Hillary’s campaign.
Clinton, after all, understands promiscuity. Bill
Clinton May Get Payout of $20 Million [WSJ]
BUSH/DUBAI
CONNECTIONS:
Dubai funds Neil Bush's company
Posted: February
27, 2006
1:00 am Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com
Investors from the United Arab
Emirates helped fund the $23 million Neil Bush raised for Ignite!, the
learning systems company that holds lucrative No Child Left Behind Act
contracts in Florida and Texas. The "Cow" is an Ignite! portable computer
designed to work in a classroom, providing interactive instruction aimed at
improving students' scores on standardized tests. If you loved Billy Carter
and "Billy Beer," you're certain to love Neil Bush and the "Ignite! Cow."
Neil Bush's frequent travels to Dubai are documented by Datamatix, a
Dubai-based information technology company that has featured Neil Bush as a
speaker. The Datamatix website features several prominent photographs of
Neil Bush addressing a Dubai conference, identifying Neil Bush as "the
brother of U.S. President George Bush."
Bush Family, Dubai Ports World and the Carlyle Group: More
incest than a village in Appalachia*
INTRODUCTION
MITT ROMNEY
Mormon writings claim
that Mitt Romney descended from the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith who, it is
blasphemously alleged, descended from Jesus Christ and his many wives.
By Vern G. Swanson
There is a 'chosen people' reserved in premortality to come to this earth in
the last days through certain lineages. There is also a 'chosen family' in
the latter days for Joseph Smith declared, 'but few of them [gentiles] will
be gathered with the chosen family.' The 'chosen' were not all Jews, but
also Ephraimites of the Shiloh Dynasty, who were called and ordained before
the foundation of the earth to this work, and for the most part have
admirably accomplished their missions.
We
have attempted to show how the patriarchal and matriarchal
bloodline of the Lamb's chosen family presently
flows through the veins of Joseph Smith, and
because of it he was the Grail king and
inheritor of the promises of the dispensation of the fullness of time.
Because of this extended family the gospel could flourish where it was
planted. In this regard, speaking of New York and by extension New England,
the Lord declared: Behold, and lo, I have much people in this place, in the
regions round about; and an effectual door shall be opened in the regions
round about in this eastern land. -- D & C 100:3
(...)
If
the noble blood of Jesus Christ and His wives
was present in America's founding fathers and specifically
in Joseph Smith's lineage, might it
also be present in other members of the Church leadership at all levels? If
the blood of Israel was richly
concentrated in England, Wales, and Scotland, was this not the ancestral
base of most of our LDS leaders?...
In
scripture, the 'true vine' is usually used as a reference to Jesus Christ
(John 15:1,5). However, it is also a metaphor for God's chosen people... It
should be noted as well that later genealogical research has shown that many
members of the early LDS Church leadership were distantly related to the
Joseph Smith family. Brigham Young, speaking in 1845 of a shared genealogy,
noted: 'When we come to the connections we discover that we all sprung back
to the settlement of New England about 200 years ago...
Other lines descending from Jesus Christ may be
included in the Church's royal family...
A
few common ancestors in Britain seem to have been a crucial pivot in the
family tree, which spread its branches to other founder and apostles in the
LDS Church. Dealing with this issue, an interesting letter written in 1853,
referencing a speech from Brigham Young, from Orson Pratt to
Parley P. Pratt has come to light: 'You
will recall that Joseph had a vision and saw that our families and his all
sprang from the same man a few generations ago... The Lord has his eye upon
him, and upon his father, and upon their progenitors, clear back to Abraham
and from Abraham to the flood, and from the flood to Enoch and from Enoch to
Adam.'...
...Archibald F. Bennett (1896-1965), Church genealogist...discovered that
several generations back to Joseph did have a common ancestor with the
Pratts. This ancestor was the English reformer,
John Lathrop (1584-1653), the fifth great-grandfather of the
Prophet Joseph Smith.
John
Lathrop was a minister in the Church of England who broke from his church
and formed a small dissident congregation. He was persecuted and imprisoned
and eventually emigrated to America. Thousands of his descendants are LDS,
as Richard W. Price wrote in his biography and genealogy of Lathrop: 'In the
[LDS] Church I would say probably 25 percent of the original Church members
in America were descended from him [Lathrop]... I don't think there's any
recent, common ancestor that has more descendants in the Church.'
According to genealogy, early Church leaders related to Lathrop include
Oliver Cowdery, Orson and Parley P. Pratt, Wilford Woodruff, Frederick G.
Williams, Joseph Smith, Sr., Joseph F. and Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B.
Lee, and others. More recently are included Nathan Eldon Tanner,
Marion G. Romney and Bishop H. Burke
Peterson, to name a very few. From this astonishing discovery, one can
reason that Joseph selected many of the general authorities, not because of
nepotism, but because he knew them through revelation to be
descendants of Jesus Christ.
Besides LDS leaders, the Lathrop line has produced other noted Americans,
namely Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eli Whitney, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Dr. Benjamin Spock. More recently we
have President George Bush, Utah Congressman Dan Marriott, former Secretary
of Education T. H. Bell, former LDS Michigan governor
George Romney and his son, Mitt Romney, governor of
Massachusetts." (Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline,
Vern G. Swanson, 2006, pp. 165-167)
* * *
Mitt Romney performed his
Mormon missionary obligation in France in the late 1960s. During that
period, Romney was promoted to "the highest position attainable by a
missionary, that of assistant to the mission president in
Paris... In the
absence of the mission president, who had returned to the United States
after his wife's death, Romney took on a greater leadership role.”
Paris, France is the location of the Prieuré de Sion, which is the “hidden
center of supreme
command” over all secret societies
worldwide. Was Mitt Romney being groomed by the Prieuré de Sion for
his future role as President of the United States? Is Mitt Romney now
a Learned Elder of Sion?
“..the 121 dignitaries of the Prieuré de Sion
are all éminences grises of high finance and of international political or
philosophical societies...” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail, p. 214)
The Making of Mitt Romney
The Boston Globe
By Michael Kranish and Michael
Paulson, Globe Staff | June 25, 2007
“For two and a half years, Mitt Romney would
wear the dark suits and white shirts of a Mormon
missionary. All of his time, all of his energy,
would be devoted to trying to persuade the
people of France to join the Mormon Church.
(Photo / Andre Salarnier)”
“In the 'Conversion Diary,' then a newsletter
of the French Mission, he is mentioned repeatedly for standout numbers of
hours spent door-knocking, numbers of copies of the Book of Mormon
distributed and numbers of invitations for return visits. He was promoted
through the ranks, first to zone leader in Bordeaux, and then to the highest
position attainable by a missionary, that of
assistant to the mission president in
Paris... In
the absence of the mission president, who had returned to the United States
after his wife's death, Romney took on a greater leadership role. It was
during this period, in late 1968, that some people say they saw the first
glimpses of the super-organized achiever who many knew in later years.”
Mitt Romney's great
grandfather, Miles Park Romney, was one of the early Mormon leaders who
practiced and defended the practice of polygamy.
Mormon roots
Romney's family history is
intertwined with that of the Mormon church. The Romneys
came from the English village of Dalton-in-Furness,
about 280 miles northwest of London, and immigrated to
America in response to the same kind of missionary work
that Mitt would perform.
Mormonism was in its
infancy in 1837 when the Romney family, headed by a
carpenter named Miles Archibald Romney, heard a
missionary speak near their home about the story of the
religion's founder and prophet, Joseph Smith.
Born in the little village
of Sharon, Vt., Smith was praying in the woods of
western New York when, according to his account, he saw
''a pillar of light exactly over my head.'' Two
personages, God and Jesus, appeared before him, telling
him that other churches ''were all wrong.'' Several
years later, in the same woods, the angel Moroni
appeared to him, directing him to a set of golden plates
on which was recorded the history of an Israelite tribe
that migrated to America and became the ancestors of the
Native Americans.
The Romneys were so moved
by the missionary's story that they were baptized as
Mormons and, in 1841, they journeyed to Nauvoo, Ill.,
where Smith had established a Mormon community. On Aug.
18, 1843, the Romneys had a son named Miles Park Romney,
the great-grandfather of Mitt Romney.
A year later, Smith was
assassinated and the Mormons were driven out of Nauvoo,
headed for a new promised land of Utah. The Mormons
believed that the great mountains of the West would
protect them from persecution and from hostility toward
polygamy. Mormon men had begun taking ''plural wives''
after Smith said God told him to revive the Old
Testament practice of polygamy.
When Miles Park Romney
turned 18, he followed instructions from Mormon leader
Brigham Young that he find a wife. On May 10, 1862,
Miles married a woman who would eventually bear him 10
children, Hannah Hood Hill. One month later, with Hannah
pregnant, Miles left to perform church missionary duties
in England for nearly 3 1/2 years.
Two months after the
marriage, on July 8, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln
signed an antibigamy act, which prohibited polygamy in
Utah and the other territories. Miles believed strongly
in the church's practices and was committed to his
mission to bring converts to America. He laid out his
beliefs in England in an article titled ''Persecution.''
''Many, now, wonder why it
is that we are so despised,'' Miles wrote. But Miles
stood by his faith, writing that ''from the earliest
ages of the history of man, Truth and those who strictly
adhere to its principles have been unpopular.''
Miles returned to Utah in
October 1865, meeting his 2 1/2-year-old daughter for
the first time. The family was poor, possessing a small
cook stove, a bed, three chairs and a small table.
Miles, a carpenter, bought land and built a two-room
wooden house. Hannah became pregnant again, and a second
daughter was born.
''We were happy,'' Hannah
recalled, in an autobiography written for her family
when she was 80 years old. ''We had two sweet little
girls to bless our home and make it more happy and they
bound us together in love and union.''
Addition to a
marriage
It was then, in 1867, that
Miles P. Romney had a fateful meeting with Young.
''Brother Miles P., I want
you to take another wife,'' Young requested, according
to Hannah's autobiography.
Miles faced the choice of
obeying US law, under which polygamy was illegal, or the
head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He chose the church. Hannah was distraught.
''I felt that was more than
I could endure, to have him divide his time and
affections,'' Hannah wrote later. ''I used to walk the
floor and shed tears of sorrow. If anything will make a
woman's heart ache, it is for her husband to take
another wife, but I put my trust in my Heavenly Father
and prayed and pleaded with him to give me strength to
bear this great trial.''
Then Hannah performed her
duty: she prepared a room for her husband's new wife,
Caroline Lambourne. Hannah wrote, ''I was able to live
in the principle of polygamy and give my husband many
wives.'' But her despair deepened when her younger
daughter died at 10 months.
Soon, Young gave Miles and
his two wives a new mission: sell your home, and move to
the southern Utah town of St. George. The new settlement
about 300 miles south of Salt Lake was in a vast desert,
surrounded by red-toned ridges in a region where summer
temperatures often topped 100 degrees.
Young prophesied that,
''There will yet be built between these volcanic ridges,
a city, with spires and towers and steeples, with homes
containing many inhabitants.'' The Romneys sold their
Salt Lake City home and moved to St. George, where they
lived ''in a little shanty, a small board room, and a
wagon box,'' Hannah wrote.
From the shanty, the
Romneys wrote themselves into church history as
builders. Miles played a major role in the construction
of St. George Temple. Then, Brigham Young hired Miles to
build a two-story addition to his winter home in St.
George. Miles took on the task with zeal, constructing
one of the most lavish residences in Utah, a sandstone
brick dwelling with an elaborate porch painted red and
green. The restored home is visited today by Mormons
from around the world, who are told of Miles's role in
building the house. Pictures of Young and Romney hang in
an adjoining building.
But while Miles was
prospering as a builder, he had increasing trouble
handling two wives. Hannah wrote that Caroline ''was
very jealous of me. ..... She wanted all my husband's
attention. When she couldn't get it there was always a
fuss in the house. [Miles], being a just man, didn't
give way to her tantrums.''
Miles and Caroline had two
children, whom Hannah agreed to care for. But Caroline
was not satisfied. She asked Young for permission to
return to her parents in Salt Lake City. The separation
was ''the severest trial ever experienced'' by Miles,
according to ''Life Story of Miles Park Romney,''
written by his son, Thomas. Miles and Hannah ''made a
special trip of three hundred miles by wagon to try to
induce Carrie to return to her home in Saint George. But
all their pleadings were in vain,'' and a divorce was
granted, according to the biography.
Miles, meanwhile, was
climbing in prominence in the church. He was given a new
responsibility: defeat a congressional effort to enforce
antipolygamy prohibitions. Miles and four other Mormon
leaders signed a letter stating that ''the Anti-polygamy
bill ..... is unconstitutional and is an act of special
legislation and ostracism, never before heard of in a
republican government and its parallel hardly to be
found in the most absolute despotisms, disfranchising
and discriminating, as it does, 200,000 free and loyal
citizens, because of a particular tenet in their
religious faith.''
Romney and the others said
the legislation violated the Declaration of
Independence's guarantee that all men had the rights of
''life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'' and the
Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion.
The lobbying paid off and
the bill died in the Senate, but other antipolygamy laws
remained on the books.
For a brief time, with
Caroline having left, Miles and Hannah were once again
in a single-wife marriage. It was then, in 1871, that
Hannah gave birth to Gaskell, the grandfather of Mitt
Romney.
Two years after Gaskell's
birth, however, Miles met the fair-skinned Catharine
Cottam, who had flowing hair, a serene smile, and was
described by her brother as the ''prettiest girl in St.
George.'' Miles married Catharine in Salt Lake City on
Sept. 15, 1873.
Hannah, seven months
pregnant, did not attend the wedding. Instead, she
prepared a room for Catharine, whom she called ''a girl
of good principles and a good Latter-day Saint.''
''I cannot explain how I
suffered in my feelings while I was doing all this hard
work, but I felt that I would do my duty if my heart did
ache,'' Hannah wrote.
Two months after Miles and
Catharine were married, the child of Miles and Hannah
died during delivery. Hannah blamed herself.
''I felt I had caused it by
doing so much hard work,'' Hannah wrote.
Nearly four years later,
Romney married again, taking as his wife Annie M.
Woodbury, a schoolteacher.
Romney's life in St. George
with Hannah, Catharine and Annie briefly settled into a
comfortable, devout routine. But church leaders in Salt
Lake City intervened, devising a plan to plant Mormon
communities in an arc throughout the West. Miles was
told by church leaders to uproot his family and help
settle the town of St. Johns, Ariz.
The journey of almost 500
miles was harrowing, requiring the wagon trains to skirt
the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.
''Here you can see the
river hundreds of feet below you winding its way between
perpendicular banks of solid rock without a tree to be
seen and devoid of vegetation,'' Catharine wrote her
parents, as quoted in a volume compiled by her
great-granddaughter, titled, ''Letters of Catharine
Cottam Romney, Plural Wife.''
Finally, the Romneys
arrived in St. Johns. It was a sparsely settled town, a
Wild West amalgamation of gun-toting farmers and
laborers, including Native Americans and Mexicans, who
were especially resentful of new settlers such as the
Mormons. The local newspaper, the Apache Chief, urged on
May 30, 1884, that ''the shotgun and rope'' be used to
get rid of Mormon settlers.
''Hang a few of their
polygamist leaders such as ..... Romney ..... and a stop
will be put to it,'' the newspaper said.
Catharine began to fear her
surroundings, writing, ''I believe there are some as
wicked people here as can be found anywhere on the
footstool of God.''
The tensions accelerated as
local authorities sought to try Romney on charges of
polygamy. To avoid prosecution, Romney sent Catharine
and Annie into hiding.
But authorities brought new
charges, alleging that Romney lied about having title to
his land. One night, a marshal arrived at the Romney
home after midnight, demanding that Miles surrender.
''The marshal had a gun in
one hand and handcuffs in the other,'' Hannah wrote.
A colony in
Mexico
Miles fled to Utah, where
he was told by church leaders ''to go to Old Mexico and
build a city of refuge for the people that would have to
go there on account of persecutions of polygamy,''
Hannah wrote. Miles agreed, and decided it was safest to
go with only one of his wives, Annie. He left behind
Hannah and Catharine and their children, hoping they
would reunite in the coming months.
After weeks of travel,
Romney reached a vantage point in the Mexican mountains.
Gazing upon a valley that
extended for miles on the banks of the Piedras Verdes
River, Miles Romney saw mesquite and cactus carpeting
the flatlands, with stands of scrub oak shading the
riverbanks. The valley floor was 5,000 feet high,
providing a climate cool enough to support peach and
apple trees. Beyond brown hills, the towering,
pine-covered peaks of the Sierra Madre curtained the
valley, catching the winter snows that would provide
ample water for irrigation. This would be the colony of
Juarez - Colonia Juarez.
At first, Miles was
desperately poor and responsible for an enormous family.
He lived out of a wagon, and then a crude hut.
On Dec. 27, 1885, shortly
after helping establish the colony, Miles despaired of
his plight. He feared federal marshals might come to
Mexico to arrest him. He was uncertain about the fate of
Hannah and Catharine.
''I sometimes think that I
am only an injury now to both my family and my
friends,'' Romney wrote to Catharine's brother Thomas.
''I have borrowed my friends' money, and my family
receive no support from me, and the prospect ahead seems
as black as midnight darkness.''
Soon, Hannah arrived. Then,
more than a year after Romney arrived in Mexico,
Catharine joined them. A festive reunion followed, with
Miles, his three wives, and their children. ''21 of us
all together had a splendid dinner,'' Catharine wrote
her parents.
The town, meanwhile, began
to take shape, due in significant part to Gaskell
Romney. At 15, he helped build the canal that irrigated
the fields, and helped build a family farm known as
Cliff Ranch, in the mountains overlooking Colonia
Juarez.
Then the family's world
came crashing down once again. Back in Utah, some of the
same Mormon leaders who had urged Romney to create a
refuge for polygamy now turned against the practice.
In September of 1890,
Church president Wilford Woodruff issued what was called
the Manifesto: ''I now publicly declare that my advice
to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting
any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.''
The careful wording of the
Manifesto might have given some solace to the Romneys.
They may have believed that Woodruff was referring to
the law in the United States, not Mexico. They continued
their practice of plural marriage, but even more
isolated than before. Indian attacks and crop failures
were common.
Miles moved to a nearby
town called Colonia Dublan and, in 1897, seven years
after the Manifesto, married for a fifth time, to a
wealthy widow named Emily Henrietta Eyring Snow, the
only wife with whom he did not have children.
Gaskell, meanwhile, married
Anna Amelia Pratt, who would become Mitt Romney's
grandmother. Anna descended from one of the most
important families in the Mormon faith. Her grandfather,
Parley Pratt, had 12 wives and was chosen by Joseph
Smith as one of the 12 Apostles.
Gaskell and Anna broke with
their family traditions and did not engage in plural
marriage.
After 12 years of marriage,
the couple had a boy whom they named George W. Romney,
the fourth of their seven children... /
George Romney was Mitt Romney's
father.
Mitt Romney's Mormonism
Mitt Romney's great-great-grandfather,
Parley P. Pratt, was among the first leaders of the LDS Church in the early
19th century. His first cousin once removed Marion George Romney, was an
Apostle of LDS Church. Mitt Romney's father, George W. Romney, was a
patriarch of LDS Church.
Parley P.
Pratt
Parley Parker Pratt (12 April 1807 – 13 May
1857) was a leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and an original member of Quorum
of the Twelve Apostles from 1835 until his murder in 1857. He
served in the Quorum with his younger brother, Orson Pratt. He was a
missionary, poet, religious writer and longtime editor of the religious
publication The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star. Scenic Parley's Canyon
in Salt Lake City, earlier known as Big Canyon, was renamed in his
honor.
Pratt practiced plural marriage and had twelve wives. One
great great grandson is Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and
suspended candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential
nomination.[1]...
[Pratt] was also ordained to the office of an elder
in the church. Continuing on to his family's home, he introduced his younger
brother, Orson Pratt, to Mormonism and baptized him on 19 September
1830.
Pratt then returned to Fayette, New York in October 1830, where
he met Joseph Smith and was asked to join a missionary group assigned to
preach to the Native American (Lamanite) tribes on the Missouri frontier.
During the trip west, he and his companions stopped to visit Sidney Rigdon,
and were instrumental in converting Rigdon and approximately 130 members of
his congregation within two to three weeks.
Pratt was later assigned
additional missions to Canada, the Eastern United States, the Southern
United States, England, the Pacific Islands, and to South America. He moved
to Valparaiso, Chile to begin the missionary work there. They left after not
much success and the death of his child Omner in 1852. In addition to his
brother, Orson Pratt and Sidney Rigdon, he was instrumental in introducing
the Mormon faith to a number of future LDS leaders, including Frederick G.
Williams, John Taylor and his wife Leonora, Isaac Morley and Joseph Fielding
and his sisters, Mary and Mercy Fielding.
In addition to serving as
an active missionary, Pratt entered the leadership of the early Latter Day
Saint movement acting as an original member of the
Quorum of Twelve Apostles. While on a mission to the British
Isles in 1839, Pratt was editor of a newly created periodical, The
Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star. While presiding over the church's
branches and interests in New England and the mid-Atlantic states, Pratt
published a periodical entitled The Prophet from his headquarters in New
York City. He was also a noted religious writer and poet. He produced an
autobiography, as well as some poems which have become staple LDS hymns,
some of which are included in the current LDS Church hymnal.
After
the death of Joseph Smith, Pratt and his family were among the Latter Day
Saints who emigrated to Utah Territory and continued on as The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) under the direction of
Brigham Young. Pratt was involved in establishing the refugee settlements
and fields at both Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, Iowa and personally led a
pioneer company along the Mormon Trail to the Salt Lake Valley. Sometime in
the mid 1850s, working with George D. Watt, he helped develop the Deseret
alphabet. In 1854, Pratt went to California to preside over the Pacific
Mission of the LDS Church headquartered in San Fransisco.
From: Mystery
Babylon: Catholic or Jewish?
The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, surrounded
himself with 12 apostles of which his closest colleagues were Jewish
Cabalists, Orson Hyde and Alexander Neibaur. Lance Owens wrote of Neibaur’s
intimate knowledge of the Cabala and his strong influence on Joseph
Smith:
“That Neibaur brought a knowledge of Kabbalah to
Nauvoo has been mentioned in several studies of the period. For instance,
Newel and Avery note in their biography of Emma Smith, ‘Through Alexander
Neibaur, Joseph Smith had access to ancient Jewish rites called cabalism...
That he not only knew something of Kabbalah, but apparently possessed a
collection of original Jewish Kabbalistic works in Nauvoo, is however
documented in material almost totally overlooked by Mormon
historians.
“Can anyone familiar with the history and personality
of Joseph Smith--the prophet who restored the secret knowledge and rituals
conveyed to Adam, translated the works of Abraham, Enoch, and Moses, and
retranslated Genesis--question that he would have been interested in the
original version of this Jewish occult tradition? And here, in Neibaur, was
a man who could share a version of that knowledge with him. Whatever the
reasons for the similarities, it should be remembered that the
Hermetic-Kabbalistic world view parallels Joseph’s vision of God in many
particulars. Not only might Joseph have been interested in this material,
but he would have noted how similar this sacred, secret tradition was with
his own restoration of ancient truth. And perhaps Neibaur, on a religious
quest--from Judaism and Kabbalah, Europe and England, to Christianity and
Mormonism and a new home in Nauvoo--saw or even amplified that intrinsic
sympathy in his explications of the tradition for Joseph.
“Whatever the reasons for the similarities, it should
be remembered that the Hermetic-Kabbalistic world view parallels Joseph’s
vision of God in many particulars. Not only might Joseph have been
interested in this material, but he would have noted how similar this
sacred, secret tradition was with his own restoration of ancient truth. And
perhaps Neibaur, on a religious quest--from Judaism and Kabbalah, Europe and
England, to Christianity and Mormonism and a new home in Nauvoo--saw or even
amplified that intrinsic sympathy in his explications of the tradition for
Joseph.
“Certainly the first text Joseph Smith would have
confronted was the Zohar, the great heart of the Kabbalah. This is
one of the works Neibaur cited repeatedly in his article and, as the central
text of Kabbalah, is the key book any individual with Kabbalistic interests
would have preserved in his library. Familiarity with the Zohar was a
given for a Kabbalist, particularly one with knowledge of works as divergent
as those cited by Neibaur, all of which expounded in some degree upon themes
in the Zohar. If Neibaur had read to Joseph from any single text, or
explained Kabbalistic concepts contained in a principal book, the
Zohar would have been the book with which to start. This might
explain why in 1844 Smith, in what may be his single greatest discourse and
in the most important public statement of his theosophical vision,
apparently quotes almost word for word from the first section of the
Zohar.” (“Joseph Smith and
Kabbalah: The Occult Connection”)
