Munger, Kissinger, and Buffett.

One of my favorite 60's folk acts.

Charlie Munger just died at 99.

Henry Kissinger at 100.

While everyone debated whether Kissinger was bad or good, whether we’re allowed to say that he was bad or good, who is allowed to say that he was bad or good, etc., etc.,—all of those terribly interesting conversations the internet has literally every day—the Genealogian homed in like a bloodhound on the real issue.

Were Henry Kissinger and Charlie Munger related? How else can we explain their astonishing shared longevity?

Kissinger was born in Germany to German Jewish parents. His family immigrated to the United States in 1938, after a stint in London. Munger was born in Omaha, Nebraska, basically never left, and was descended almost entirely from British Islanders who came to North American before the American Revolution. I assumed, if I ever gave it any thought, that he was German. But Munger is in fact an old Connecticut name I’d never encountered before.

So no, they weren’t related.

There’s at least a possibility Munger was related to Kissinger’s second wife (she is a slim, but sufficient, 1/8 Yankee), but I haven’t found the connection. Both she and Munger were Mayflower descendants, but from different people.

And of course, inevitably, Charlie Munger was related to Warren Buffett. Not because they’re both from Omaha, both billionaires, and teenage Munger worked at Buffett’s grandfather’s grocery store. But because if most of your ancestors were Yankees in 1840, that’s a whole lot of New Englanders in 1640. Many opportunities for overlap. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Omaha or Osaka, two billion dollars or ten bucks to your name.

For Buffett and Munger, the shared ancestors were 11 and 12 generations back, respectively. So we’re talking 2000 or 4000 ancestors in those generations, most of them New Englanders. Sure, that’s a smallish slice of the roughly 20,000 old Englanders who sailed between 1620 and 1640, but many of those people have no descendants living today, or—proportionally speaking—very few. The particularly fecund couples are disproportionately likely to be a shared ancestors of two random people living today.

For these two “random people,” the shared ancestors are Nathaniel (1592-1644) and Elizabeth (Deming) Foote (1595-1683). Way back there at the first generation in America. And yeah, who isn’t related at that point? It’s still fun. The Footes were Charlie’s 9th great-grandparents and Warren’s 8th, making them ninth cousins, once removed.¹

This is just anecdotal, but I’d bet the Footes are one of those immigrant couples making an outsize appearance in modern family trees. I’m not descended from them myself, but seems everyone else is.

Nathaniel, incidentally, is one of those 17th-century types with his own Wikipedia page who absolutely would not have one if it weren’t for overzealous genealogists. But where would we be without overzealous genealogists? Not any world I’d want to live in.

Charlie Munger’s grandmother. Basically his face, copy-pasted, but without the glass eye. Thanks to a FamilySearch user for clipping this.

While we’re talking surprisingly close genealogical connections amongst businesspeople, I learned from the New Yorker this week that Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, and Lisa Su, CEO of its competitor AMD, are first cousin, once removed. And they didn’t even know each other growing up! Those are some strong genes, in every sense.

Anyway, if you thought I was going to leave the Kissinger/Munger connection at “zero,” you have overestimated me.

Young Henry, then known to all as Alfred Heinz Kissinger, immigrated through Ellis Island in 1938 aboard the S.S. Île de France, a French luxury liner with a certain popular cachet. Many of the other passengers were wealthy Americans returning from vacation in Europe. One of those Americans was Mrs. Henry Pinkney Phyfe of Englewood, N.J., neé Miss Elizabeth Pancoast of Omaha, Nebraska.

Her father happened to be a prominent Omaha attorney. You know who else’s father was a prominent Omaha attorney?

Bam. From 1927.

Henry Phyfe’s great-grandfather was the great furniture-maker Duncan Phyfe, and the White House has a nice collection of Duncan Phyfe pieces. You see where I’m going with this. Most regrettably, I could not bring you a picture of Henry Kissinger pontificating about realpolitik on a neoclassical couch in the Green Room.

One does what one can.

It’s a small world after all.

I could go on forever. One person to the next, all connected one way or the other. This post is as hard to land as the Île de France.² I’d make a great conspiracy theorist, except I can see how the sausage is made.

1. I’m actually more closely related to Munger, at 8th cousins flat. And yet for some reason they don’t let me speak at the shareholders meetings.

2. Fred Astaire, neè Fredrick Austerlitz, also from the fine city of Omaha.

Fred and his parents went on vacation just as Charlie’s grandparents got home. Someone please stop me.