Sometimes, genealogy can be used not only to prove family relationships, but also to disprove it. If you follow California wing nuts you have no doubt heard that our governor Gavin Newsom is Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nephew. Uh, no. He’s not. Here’s the scoop.
Gavin Christopher Newsom was born in 1967 to William Alfred Newsom III and Tessa Thomas Menzies Newsom. Bill Newsom had a sister Belinda, who in 1960 married one Ronald Pelosi. Ronald’s younger brother Paul was married to Nancy D’Alesandro. Paul and Nancy Pelosi are still married to this day but Ronald and Belinda divorced in 1977. Belinda Barbara Newsom died in 2008.
Thus, until Gavin was roughly ten years old, his Aunt Belinda was married to Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law. While there was, indeed, a connection between the Newsoms and the Pelosis, that did not make Nancy Gavin’s aunt, and even if it one time did, it ended more than forty years ago.
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