World IN BRIEF : BRITAIN : Major, Thatcher Kin Via 1600s Laborer
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Prime Minister John Major is distantly related to his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, via a 17th-Century laborer named Charles Crust and his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, a London newspaper reported. The account said a genealogist traced Crust’s family tree through local government records and discovered that Thatcher and Major are fifth cousins, once removed (meaning Major is the son of a fifth cousin of Thatcher’s). As recently as the middle of the last century, their ancestors lived almost next door to each other.
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