Elizabeth Warren’s claim of being 1/32 Cherokee in doubt

Elizabeth Warren’s claim of being 1/32 Cherokee in doubt

Could it get any worse?

When Elizabeth Warren first acknowledged that she had represented herself to be Native American when filling out forms for the Association of American Law Schools directories in the mid-80s through mid-90s, Warren based her claim entirely on family “lore.”

A couple of days later, her campaign came up with the claim that Warren was 1/32 Cherokee based on a marriage certificate for her great-great-great grandmother.

Now even that tenuous claim to Native American status is in doubt, via Boston Herald:

Until the Herald broke the story last Friday, Warren had never mentioned her Native American heritage on the campaign trail even as she detailed much of her personal history to voters in speeches, statements and a video.

But yesterday, she insisted, “Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born. These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native Americans and talked about tribes since I was a little girl.”

Warren’s latest statements came as genealogists at the New England Historic Genealogical Society were unable to back up earlier accounts that her great-great-great-grandmother is Cherokee. Warren’s ancestor, O.C. Sarah Smith, is listed on an electronic transcript of a 1894 marriage application as Cherokee. But as of yesterday, the society was unable to find the actual record or a photocopy, according to spokesman Tom Champoux.

A copy of the marriage license itself has been located, Champoux said, but unlike the application, it does not list Smith’s ethnicity.

In response to the first Update to my prior post, a reader expressed doubt in an email to me that there would be a record of whether Warren’s great-great-great grandmother was Cherokee:

https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-159393-965105-85?cc=1709399

Bottom record on right side of page.

Professor: This is the marriage record for William J. Crawford, son of J. H. Crawford and O.C. Smith (supposedly Cherokee). This is not the document stating she is Cherokee. William J Crawford would be a gg uncle to Elizabeth Warren.

You can clearly see that he was born in Tennessee. His mother was born in North Carolina She never lived in Oklahoma.

O.C. Smith was born about 1794, in North Carolina, married Johnathan Houston Crawford in 1819, and died after 1860 in Overton, TN.

There were Cherokee in North Carolina and Tennessee and most were forcibly removed to Oklahoma in 1838 (The Trail of Tears). Warren’s family was not among those.

I only sent this based on your update. There would be no Native American ancestry records in Oklahoma related to Elizabeth Warren.

As an aside, the Herald reporter picks up on a point I have been making but almost no one has been paying attention to, that Warren’s claim that she identified herself as Native American to meet others like her does not make sense:

The American Association of Law Schools directory, which administrators once used as a tip sheet to peg diversity hires, does not specify which minority group professors belong to. So it remained unclear yesterday how Warren, who listed herself in the directory from 1986 to 1995, used it to reach out to other Native American faculty.

What a tangled web.

Update:  John Fund makes a good comparison between the box Warren did check (Native American) and the box she did not check (voluntarily paying more in taxes).  Her hypocrisy and sanctimony is the reason this story is resonating.

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