Remember, you heard it here first - well, unless like me you read the BBC News website!
For some reason, on the campaign trail, Gov. Romney doesn't mention this interesting fact about his family & religious history. What fact, you might well ask?
Some exerpts from the BBC article:
- According to a family history, one "fine day" as Mitt Romney's great-great-grandparents, Miles and Elizabeth Romney, were on their way to the market, they saw a crowd gathered around a Mormon preacher, and stopped to listen. "They beheld a group of people assembled on a street corner," wrote Thomas C Romney, their grandson, in 1948.
- "Their curiosity led them thither and they discovered that it was a religious gathering and that the preacher was a Mormon Elder from America... They were much impressed with the message delivered."
Three or four years after the baptism of Miles & Elizabeth, they set sail for the USA, from Liverpool on 7 February 1841 on a ship called the Sheffield. Their journey cost about £5.00, about three months salary for a carpenter or tradesman.
Eventually, after many trials, they came to Utah, where carpenter Miles helped to construct the temple in St. George, Utah, "a striking white building, which is now the oldest operating Mormon temple" (BBC)
So, it was this chance encounter of Englishman Miles Romney in 1837 with an American Mormon preacher that "set off a chain of events that has culminated in Mitt Romney's challenge to Barack Obama in November's US presidential election" (BBC)
- Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, has spoken about her Welsh roots, her grandfather was a coal miner from a small village in the south of Wales, but Mitt rarely, if ever, mentions his English heritage on the campaign trail.
- But why not? One might think the story of his great-great-grandfather, a carpenter from the poor North of England, who took the bold step of moving his family across the Atlantic and became a pioneer in the American West, might be one he would want to highlight.
- "There's a humble story, but it's not one that sits comfortably because it involves Mormonism," says Tim Stanley, a writer and historian specialising in US politics at Oxford University.
So, is the GOP Presidential Candidate ashamed of his British roots? Is Miles too working class for Mitt? What could be the reason? I have no idea, but it is an interesting question.
Ray Vince / 15 June 2012
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