Records shed light on candidates

They were a sailor, a bookkeeper and a factory worker, men of humble roots and distant times whose kin would run for US president in 2008.

Although they are long gone, these three are heard about on occasion through the voices of their descendants - John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now there's another way to get to know them. Under an agreement being announced yesterday, a vast range of records held by the National Archives will become more easily available online, offering information on some 100 million ancestors.

McCain talks in the campaign about granddad "Slew", the brilliant, foul-mouthed seaman. Obama speaks of the "straight-backed" Methodist ways of his great-grandfather, Rolla Payne of Kansas.

Clinton talks about the times of Hugh Simpson Rodham, the grandfather who labored in a Scranton, Pennsylvania, lace factory, back when that was enough for a stable life.

The ancestors are anecdotes these days. Once they were making their own way. The newly accessible documents provide a snapshot of who these men were.

Among the papers: a 1910 census statement showing John Sidney McCain serving as an ensign aboard the USS Washington; a 1917 draft registration card of Payne; and a 1942 draft registration card of Rodham.

Payne was white. In a sign of those segregated times, his card is marked at the bottom, along the left: "If person is of African descent, tear off this corner."

Generations later, his great-grandson, of African descent on his father's side, is close to becoming the first black Democratic nominee for president.

Rodham was 62 when he filled out his card. He fell under the 1942 "old man's draft" of World War II requiring registration by men up to their mid-60s.

Such documents are being made available as a massive collection by Ancestry.com, which has been transferring the National Archives records into digital form. People can search the online records for free through May 31. After that, a paid subscription will be required.

A look at the three men:

Inherit the windbag

In 1910, John Sidney McCain, the roughhewn son of a Mississippi sheriff, was stationed aboard the USS Washington in Puget Sound, Washington, when the census man came calling. The first of three John McCains was on his way to a legendary career.

He was ranked a lowly 79 out of 116 at the Naval Academy, the first of three John McCains who distinguished themselves in the Navy despite mediocre academy marks.

During World War I, he served as an engineering officer on the armored cruiser San Diego, escorting convoys across the Atlantic through schools of German U-boats. In World War II, he commanded an aircraft carrier task force in the Pacific and fought the Japanese from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to Tokyo Bay.

A hard drinker who could roll his own cigarettes with one hand - a talent that amazed his young grandson - Slew McCain was a pioneer in the development of naval aviation and in carrier attack strategy.

John Sidney McCain III was 9 when his granddad died. "To spend time in his company was as much fun as a young boy could imagine," the Republican presidential candidate said in a campaign speech in Meridian, Mississippi, where a naval airfield is named for his grandfather.

Toot's roots

For a man whose ancestry is half African, Obama has a deep American lineage with distinguished names. That's because some of his ancestors on his white mother's side were named after great historical figures.

There was Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham of Kansas, 1894-1970; Christopher Columbus Clark of Missouri, 1846-1937; and George Washington Overall of Kentucky, 1820-1871.

Rolla Charles Payne was not famous in any sense. On his 1917 draft registration, Payne is listed as having a slender build, medium height, gray eyes and brown hair. At age 24, he described himself as a bookkeeper for an oil company in Tulsa, Okla. His home address was in Kansas.

Obama speaks of Payne and his daughter, Obama's grandmother, nicknamed Toot, in his memoirs: "Toot's family was respectable," he wrote. "Her father held a steady job all through the Depression, managing an oil lease for Standard Oil.

"The family...read the Bible but generally shunned the tent revival circuit, preferring a straight-backed form of Methodism that valued reason over passion and temperance over both."

Blue-collar bastion

Born in Durham, England, to a Welsh miner, Hugh S. Rodham emigrated with his family to the US and worked for the Scranton Lace Co for a third of the company's 105-year existence.

His son, Hugh E. Rodham, joined his dad at the mill before leaving for Chicago to start his own drapery business. He brought his children, including Hillary, back to Scranton for their christening.

"The Scranton of my father's youth was a rough industrial city of brick factories, textile mills, coal mines, rail yards and wooden duplex houses," Clinton wrote in her memoirs.

Hugh S. Rodham's 1942 draft registration lists categories of complexion for applicants to check. Their choices were sallow, light, ruddy, dark, freckled, light brown, dark brown and black. Rodham said he was ruddy.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/21/2008 page23)