Obama is Vice-president's Distant Cousin, Says Cheney's Wife

Barack Obama makes much of his varied heritage. His father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas. But there is one element of his family history that has remained obscure: his eighth cousin is Dick Cheney. The revelation that the man promising a new style of politics is related to a vice-president credited with an unprecedented attempt to consolidate the power of old politics was made by Mr Cheney's wife.

Lynne Cheney told an interviewer that she discovered the connection between her husband and the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination while researching a memoir of growing up in Wyoming, entitled Blue Skies, No Fences, although she did not include this fact in her memoir. She said that the two were both descended from a man who moved to Wyoming from Maryland.

"If you go back eight generations they have a common ancestor," she said. "This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor ... could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick's and Barack Obama." A spokeswoman for Mrs Cheney said that Mr Obama was descended from Mareen Duvall, a French Huguenot. His son married the granddaughter of one Richard Cheney, Susannah, who arrived in Maryland from England in the late 1650s.

The Duvalls are Mr Obama's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, and the vice-president's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.

A spokesman for Mr Obama made the wry observation that "every family has a black sheep".

Last month the Chicago Sun-Times revealed the equally startling news that Mr Obama is an 11th cousin of President George Bush, thanks to a 17th-century Massachusetts couple, Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole.