Presidential ancestors: are you related to a U.S. president?

Presidential families are among the most exhaustively researched in America, which cuts both ways: if you genuinely connect to one, the evidence is probably already published — and if you do not, that is usually easy to establish too.

Check my tree against all 40 presidents See the 33 names

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The short version

Presidents in the catalog: Forty, from Washington to the modern era.
Best-documented lines: The Adams family of Massachusetts, researched continuously for two centuries.
Where lines concentrate: Colonial New England and tidewater Virginia, the two deepest early-American record sets.
Generations back: Typically 6 to 10 to an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century president.

Why presidential descent is easier to check than most claims

Presidential genealogies have been picked over by professional researchers, historical societies, and biographers for generations. The families are documented to a standard almost no ordinary family enjoys, and the published record is broad enough that a genuine connection is usually already known and traceable rather than newly discovered.

That makes the direction of research unusually clear. You do not need to prove anything about the president; that work exists. You need to prove the handful of generations between you and the point where your family meets theirs — which is ordinary genealogy on ordinary people, and where all the actual difficulty lives.

Two caveats worth holding onto. Not every president left descendants — George Washington had no biological children, though his wider family line is well recorded. And shared surname means nothing on its own: Adams, Johnson, and Harrison are among the commonest surnames in the English-speaking world.

Presidents and presidential families in the catalog

Every one is a real profile in the shared FamilySearch tree, which is what makes a line to them checkable rather than merely claimable.

Abraham Lincoln
1809 – 1865Line extinct 1985
Sixteenth president, born in Hardin County, Kentucky, to a family traceable to colonial Hingham, Massachusetts; only his son Robert had children, and the last undisputed descendant died in 1985.
Check the wider family line
Andrew Jackson
1767 – 1845No direct descendants
Seventh president, born in the Waxhaws on the Carolina border to Scots-Irish immigrants from County Antrim; he had no biological children and adopted a nephew as his heir.
Check the wider family line
Andrew Johnson
1808 – 1875
Seventeenth president, a Raleigh-born tailor who settled at Greeneville, Tennessee; all five of his children reached adulthood, and his line continued through his two daughters.
Check if Andrew Johnson is your ancestor
Benjamin Harrison
1833 – 1901Presidential family
Twenty-third president, grandson of William Henry Harrison and great-grandson of a signer of the Declaration; he settled at Indianapolis and left three children who reached adulthood.
Check if Benjamin Harrison is your ancestor
Calvin Coolidge
1872 – 1933
Thirtieth president, of the Plymouth Notch, Vermont, Coolidges; his younger son died at sixteen during his term, and the line continued through his elder son John.
Check if Calvin Coolidge is your ancestor
Chester A. Arthur
1829 – 1886Line extinct 1972
Twenty-first president, born at Fairfield, Vermont, to an Ulster-born Baptist preacher; his last descendant, grandson Chester Alan Arthur III, died childless in 1972.
Check the wider family line
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1882 – 1945
Thirty-second president, of the Hyde Park, New York, Roosevelts, descended from a Dutch settler of New Amsterdam; five of his six children reached adulthood and left many descendants.
Check if Franklin Delano Roosevelt is your ancestor
Franklin Pierce
1804 – 1869No descendants
Fourteenth president, of the Hillsborough, New Hampshire, Pierces; all three of his sons died in childhood, the last in a train wreck weeks before his inauguration.
Check the wider family line
George Washington
1732 – 1799No direct descendants
Commander in chief of the Continental Army and president of the 1787 Federal Convention, whose Constitution he signed. He had no biological children; descent from him runs only through his siblings.
Check the wider family line
Grover Cleveland
1837 – 1908
Twenty-second and twenty-fourth president, born at Caldwell, New Jersey, to a Presbyterian minister; his eldest daughter died at twelve, and his younger children carried the line on.
Check if Grover Cleveland is your ancestor
James A. Garfield
1831 – 1881
Twentieth president, born in a log cabin in Orange Township, Cuyahoga County, Ohio; five of his seven children reached adulthood and his descendants are numerous and well documented.
Check if James A. Garfield is your ancestor
James Buchanan
1791 – 1868No descendants
Fifteenth president, born at Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, to an immigrant from County Donegal; the only president who never married, he left no children and raised orphaned nieces and nephews.
Check the wider family line
James K. Polk
1795 – 1849No descendants
Eleventh president, of the Scots-Irish Polks of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and later Tennessee; he and Sarah Childress Polk had no children by birth or by adoption.
Check the wider family line
James Madison
1751 – 1836No direct descendants
Virginia framer at the 1787 convention and its fullest note-taker; he signed the Constitution but not the Declaration, and left no children by Dolley Madison.
Check the wider family line
James Monroe
1758 – 1831Continental Army officer
Continental Army officer wounded at Trenton and later president; he signed neither founding document, and his line survives through daughter Maria Hester.
Check if James Monroe is your ancestor
John Adams
1735 – 1826Signed the Declaration
Massachusetts delegate who signed the Declaration and was abroad during the 1787 convention; his Braintree line survives through both son and daughter.
Check if John Adams is your ancestor
John Quincy Adams
1767 – 1848Adams family
Sixth president and son of the second, born at Braintree, Massachusetts; two of his three sons died young, and the family line continued through Charles Francis Adams.
Check if John Quincy Adams is your ancestor
Thomas Jefferson
1743 – 1826Signed the Declaration
Drafted and signed the Declaration, designed a "moldboard of least resistance" plow, and sat on the first federal patent board without ever patenting it; his line runs through daughters Martha and Mary, with a separately documented Hemings line.
Check if Thomas Jefferson is your ancestor

Showing the 18 best-known of 33 in this category. A tree search checks your lines against all 33.

Check my tree against all 40 presidents

How to check a presidential line

The published research does the hard part. Your job is the recent generations.

1
Ignore the surname
Sharing a president's last name is not evidence of anything. Most presidential surnames are extremely common, and the great majority of people carrying them are unrelated to the family.
2
Match the family's origin, not the office
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century presidential families cluster in colonial New England and tidewater Virginia. The twentieth-century ones do not: Eisenhower's line is Palatine German through Pennsylvania, Hoover's Iowa Quaker, Reagan's Irish through Illinois. Find where your line was living in 1800 and work from there rather than assuming New England.
3
Expect a collateral line, not a direct one
Most real connections are cousinhood rather than direct descent — you descend from a president's sibling, aunt, or grandparent, not the president. That is still a genuine relationship and is usually the honest answer.
4
Check against the published genealogies
Because these families are so heavily researched, a proposed link can be tested against existing scholarship. If your line contradicts the established record, the error is almost certainly yours.

Rememberkin does the mechanical part of this automatically — every line, every generation, checked at once. Run the search free.

If a presidential line turns up

A proven line deserves better than a screenshot

When Rememberkin confirms a presidential ancestor, it can print the whole line — every generation between you and them, with names, dates, and portraits.

Search my tree free

Every generation between you and them, documented
The relationship named plainly — 5th cousin twice removed, stated plainly
Printed as a wall chart or bound into your family book

Questions people ask

How do I know if I'm related to a U.S. president?

Trace your own line backward until it reaches colonial New England or early Virginia, where most presidential families originate, and see whether it meets a documented branch of one. Sharing a surname is not evidence. If your family already keeps a FamilySearch tree, all your lines can be checked against presidential profiles at once.

Which president has the most descendants?

There is no authoritative ranking, and any specific figure you see quoted is an estimate. The Adams family is among the most thoroughly documented, which is why Adams connections surface more often than others — that reflects record quality as much as family size.

Did George Washington have descendants?

Not directly. Washington had no biological children; he raised Martha's children from her first marriage. People who describe themselves as Washington descendants are descended from his siblings or wider family, which is a collateral relationship rather than direct descent.

Does having a president's surname mean I'm related?

No. Adams, Jackson, Johnson, Harrison, and Taylor are among the most common surnames in the English-speaking world, and the overwhelming majority of people who carry them have no connection to the presidential families at all.

Are John Adams's descendants still alive today?

Yes. The Adams line of Massachusetts has been documented continuously since the eighteenth century and has living descendants, which is a large part of why it is the most-searched presidential genealogy.

Other ancestors worth checking for

Founding FathersCheck your line Colonial AmericaCheck your line Mayflower passengersCheck your line

See whether a presidential line runs through your family

Rememberkin checks every line in your tree at once and shows the relationship plainly, generation by generation.