26 October 2013

President Lincoln Does Not Have Descendants

We don't normally get remotely close to Miley Cyrus on this blog, but ad for something about her appeared next to an ad Ancestry.com involving President Abraham Lincoln. The ads appear in a "From the Web" section of ads "sponsored content by Taboola" and were noticed tonight while viewing news content sites. The ads did not appear on a genealogy site.


It would be fine except that President Abraham Lincoln has no descendants. Not one. His last great-grand child died some time ago and was the last direct descendant of the former president.

I realize it's a minor detail and I may be nitpicking, but rumor has it that some genealogists do make distinctions between relatives and descendants. That's sarcasm (grin!).  The article to which the ad links does not actually claim there are "new" Lincoln descendants, just that George Clooney is a Lincoln relative. Whoever created the headline either did not read the article or does not know the difference between a descendant and a relative.

Despite who made the mistake, it still makes a statement.