Who is Pete Buttigieg?

Pete Buttigieg is the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a Democratic candidate for President in the 2020 presidential election. He was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and served in Afghanistan in 2014. Pete Buttigieg is said to be the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate. He is often referred to simply as Mayor Pete.

Famous Kin

Mayor Pete’s ancestry can be traced back to Magna Carta Surety Robert de Ros, King Alfred the Great, and Charlemagne. Other royal kin include the late Princess Diana. U.S. Presidential kin include George Washington, John Adams, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and at least seven others.

Celebrities connected to Mayor Pete include Bill Nye the Science Guy, actor Humphrey Bogart, comedian Chevy Chase, singer Bing Crosby, Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry, and singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Other notable cousins include astronaut Alan Shepard, Sir Winston Churchill, actor John Wayne, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, legendary Buffalo Bill, and many others.

Surprising Mayflower Connection

Pete Buttigieg is the descendant of John and Lydia Sprague of Duxbury, Massachusetts and Lebanon, Connecticut, a distinction he shares with actor John Wayne and Sir Winston Churchill.

John Sprague (c1655-1727/8) was said to be the son of John and Ruth (Bassett) Sprague as he was referred to as such in a couple of court documents. However, the NEHGS's Christopher Challender Child has shown through a Y-DNA analysis that John Sprague senior was not the biological father, but rather Samuel Fuller, son of Samuel and Bridget (Lee) Fuller (See Mayflower Descendant, Summer 2019, pp. 117-149). Samuel Fuller was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Samuel Fuller, thus making Pete Buttigieg, Sir Winston Churchill and actor John Wayne descendants as well.