Oddly enough FDR1 and Churchill were eighth cousins once removed2, if the researches of one genealogist3 are correct. Both men, it appears, can trace a common descent4 from a personage known as John Cooke who came to America on the Mayflower. John married Sarah Warren; one of their daughters was the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of Sara Delano, FDR’s mother, and another was a direct ancestress5 of Churchill’s American-born mother, Jennie Jerome.