It turns out there is considerable doubt as to whether Winston Churchill actually had any Iroquois blood in his ancestry, as reported here the other day, though he liked to retail the idea himself. The indispensible people at the Churchill Centre have the skinny:
Long before the age of political correctness, some Churchills delighted in extolling the legend of their Native American blood, believed to have been introduced through Jennie Jerome’s maternal grandmother, Clarissa Willcox. Despite the much-mooted Indian features of some of Clarissa’s descendants, there is no genealogical evidence to support Indian ancestry in the Jerome lineage. . .
The Churchill world does not easily give up its myths, no matter how fanciful. Sir Winston, to whose romantic nature the story appealed, was known to believe it, as did some members of his family, including all the writing Leslies beginning with Anita Leslie’s father. Sir Winston’s grandson, in his preface to The Great Republic, his new book of his grandfather’s writings on America, while stating his continued bias to believe, leaves it to the reader to decide if there is Native American blood in the Jerome line.
Another Fauxchahontas
One should note that despite lingering uncertainty, at least Churchill never submitted recipes for a native American cookbook, or applied for a university position citing minority status. That would set him apart not just from the egregious Elizabeth Warren, but the other famous Churchill of our time—Ward Churchill, whose claims to Indian ancestry are also just as bogus as Warren’s.
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