A Big Island couple who founded a genealogy service company has tracked GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s family ties to Hawaii and to actor Alec Baldwin.

Bruce and Kristine Harrison founded the Family Forest Project in 1995, and since have mapped the ancestral histories of thousands of political leaders, celebrities and historical figures, as well as everyday people.

“While watching Sarah Palin and Alec Baldwin talking together on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ I couldn’t help wondering if they had any idea they are related to each other,” Harrison said.

He said Palin and Baldwin are “fairly distant cousins” because their first ancestral connection is many generations back.

Harrison has connected Palin’s family to several prominent Hawaii families including the Cooke family of Bank of Hawaii, the Waterhouse and Alexander families of Alexander & Baldwin, the Atherton family of Atherton Foundation and the Monty Richards family of Kahua Ranch.

Earlier, Harrison claimed he found links between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and previous presidents, including George Washington, James Madison, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter.

Harrison said his ancestry research program now has enough data to map generation-by-generation ancestral pathways to the ancestors of up to 2 billion people.

Recently, genealogists at Ancestry.com found Palin to be a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the late Princess Diana.

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On the Net:

Family Forest: http://www.familyforest.com