U.S. Governors Project - June 2024

Question

We began last month with 43 governors left to connect. We are now down to just 35. of the more than 2500 men and women who have served as a U.S. governor, these 35 have proven to be our greatest challenges. Primarily, this is because they are young. Only six of these governors were born prior to 1950, meaning that 29 do not appear to the U.S. census records. Several are young enough that their parents are still living as well.

Just five of the 50 current United States governors remain unconnected. They are:

Maura Healey, Massachusetts Now Connected

Joe Lombardo, Nevada

Chris Sununu, New Hampshire 

Phil Murphy, New Jersey   

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania

With just 35 connections left to make, we are slowly crawling towards completion of our initial mission to have every U.S. governor connected to the Big Tree. If you'd like to help us reach our goal, please feel free to jump in. Just head on over to our Unconnected Governors List, pick the profile you'd like to work on and give it a shot. We always welcome any help we can get.   

Answer 1

Here are the state-by-state break downs for unconnected governors:

Connecticut - 1

Louisiana -1

Maine - 1

Massachusetts - 1

Hawaii - 2

Ohio - 1

Oregon - 1

Virginia - 1

Washington - 1

Nevada - 2

Rhode Island - 2

South Carolina - 2

Vermont - 2

New Jersey - 3

New Mexico - 3

New York - 3

Pennsylvania - 3

New Hampshire -  5   4

Answer 2

How are the territorial governors?

Comments

Because of the special skills required to research the territorial governors, we still list them on our page but we track their progress separately from the state government. We currently have 30 unconnected territorial governors - 21 living / 9 deceased.

Here is the breakdown. The first number is the total remaining unconnected profiles. The numbers in parenthesis are (living/dead):

American Samoa (3/2)

Guam (3/0)

Mariana Islands (5/3)

Puerto Rico (7/0)

Virginia Islands (3/4)

Answer 3

I've started some work on Governor David Paterson of NY's ancestors. I found a big error on FamilySearch which hopefully will lead to some pathways to connection. I left off here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hanson-11449 if anyone else wants to pick up this line to research. There are lots of siblings, that I added to FamilySearch from their birth registrations, to follow and the parents.

Answer 4

Turns out Gov. John Rowland's father has had a WikiTree profile for several months, but he was never connected to his son's profile. Even better, the Governor's father is connected to the Big Tree, which means the Governor is now connected as well.

Answer 5

Former governor John Lynch of New Hampshire is now connected to the Big Tree. Wikipedia correctly identifies his parents as William and Margaret Lynch. But Lynch's were a family that liked to reuse names so there were actually multiple couples named William and Margaret Lynch living in the same region. Once the correct couple as identified, however, the rest was pretty straight forward. William Lynch's 2nd great-grandfather, Ira Lynch, already had a WikiTree profile.

Answer 6

Maura Healey , Massachusetts is now connected. Through her maternal line.

This is through Dorothy being merged so does not show yet. 

Answer 7

Former Oregon Governor Kate Brown has been connected to the Big Tree. Surprisingly, the connection was made through her Brown line. The first big hurdle was properly identifying her father, James Brown. This was finally accomplished after I discovered an interview in which she stated that her father had lived in Minnesota and was deceased. The fact that his full name was James Patterson Brown, now made locating him much easier. Other ancestors also had less common first names like Goodnow and Winfield, making the connection to her great-great-grandfather, Milton Brown, fairly straightforward.

Answer 8

Former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt passed away yesterday 12 Jun 2024 at his home in Portland, Oregon. He was 83.