July 7, 2014

Churchill Centre Member Traces the Full Genealogy

Gregory B. Smith has published a limited edition of his meticulously researched book The American Ancestry of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. As is well known, Churchill’s mother Jennie Jerome was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1854. The Jerome family line in America began with Timothy Jerome, who was born on the Isle of Wight about the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688. By 1713 he had emigrated to Connecticut. Smith traces the Jerome family line from Timothy to Jennie and then works back to trace the ancestry of each woman that married into this line back to the earliest known American immigrant. From this, Smith illustrates Churchill’s relationship to prominent Americans and his eligibility for membership in various hereditary societies.

Contrary to popular belief, and what Churchill himself believed, he was not descended from a passenger on the Mayflower, though he was descended from a brother of a passenger. Nor did Churchill possess any Iroquois ancestry or kinship with George Washington. In fact, Churchill probably would have been intrigued to learn that his closest prominent American relation was none other than Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and 18th President of the United States. Churchill was a fourth cousin twice removed.

Churchill was also distantly related to quite a few other presidents including the Adams & Bush father/son combinations. No doubt he would have been very pleased to know that he and Franklin D. Roosevelt were precisely 7th cousins. He was also an 8th cousin of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In Hollywood, notable Churchill relations included John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Orson Welles, whom Churchill met.

2025 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 42nd International Churchill Conference. Washington, DC | October 9-11, 2025

2025 International Churchill Conference

The book is priced at $25 postpaid in the United States and $45 postpaid to the UK and the rest of Europe. To order, please contact Gregory Smith via email here.Family Reunion