Pictured is King Edward VII of England and Lady Randolf Churchill. Before King Edward’s coronation, he was Prince Albert. As a prince, he was a notorious philanderer while married to Princes Alexandra of Denmark. Among his consorts was Lady Randolf, originally Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill.
(Note on Lady Randolf). According to “official” biographical accounts, Lady Randoph Churchill (Jeanette “Jennie” Jerome) was born January 9, 1854, in Pompey, New York. Jennie was the second of four daughters born to financier, sportsman and speculator Leonard Jerome and Clarissa Hall, daughter of New York Assemblyman Ambrose Hall.
Had Jennie given birth to John McCann on October 6, 1865, she would have done so two months before her 12th birthday. Though it is possible, it’s highly unlikely (Note: The youngest mother on record was a Peruvian girl who, in 1938, at age five years, seven months and 21 days, gave birth to a healthy, six-pound boy via cesarean delivery).
To further complicate the mystery of Lady Randolf, two records which dispute the birth date’s accuracy and her birthplace were found.
1. On September 12, 1896, a 50-year-old Jennie Jerome, “married” and a “U.S. citizen,” arrived on the SS Umbria, which sailed from Liverpool. This disclosure places her birth sometime in 1846. She would have given birth to John McCann at age 19, which is certainly more plausible.
2. A birth record at the LDS genealogy site FamilySearch.org, places her birth at “Blenheim Palace, Oxford Co., England in 1854.” Curiously, Blenheim Palace is where she later gave birth to Winston Churchill in 1874—less than eight months after her marriage to Lord Randolf Spencer Churchill.
Though she married two more times after Lord Randolf died in 1900, Jennie Jerome, traveling as Jennie Jerome, made frequent trips to Bermuda, declaring Swiss, British, and French roots. Her age, which varied, was usually more flattering than that which was recorded on her arrival in 1896.
Jennie’s father was Leonard Jerome, a wealthy financier and stockbroker who was known as “The King of Wall Street. He had interests in many companies and was especially interested in railways, the arts and thoroughbred horseracing. One of his best friends and business associates was William K. Vanderbilt who was married to Anne Harriman, daughter of railroad tycoon Oliver Harriman.
[On a curious note, Lady Randolf reportedly had a snake tattoo on her wrist which she kept covered with bracelets].
The plot is hatched
After schooling in Great Britain, Edward, himself a less-than-stellar student, visited Canada and the United States in an 1860 tour that featured a three-day stay at the White House with President James Buchanan. The plan to create the “McCain” clan was likely hatched during this visit; Mississippi, a slave state, was chosen as the clan’s “birthplace.” The manufactured McCain lineage featured “(Admiral) John Sidney McCain” and “(General) William Alexander McCain.”
Other names that appear in genealogical records for the impromptu McCain clan during this time are “Benjamin Franklin McCain, “Alexander Hamilton McCain” and “James McCain”—an interesting collection of patriotic American names with no public records to indicate that they ever actually existed in the flesh. These sources also claim the McCains owned no fewer than 52 slaves on a 2,000-acre plantation in Carroll County, Mississippi.
At least two U.S. presidents, James Buchanan and Theodore Roosevelt, had assisted in the plot to create the McCain clan in America. Buchanan aided in setting up the bogus ancestry and Teddy Roosevelt, through his son Kermit, gave McCann/McCain unrestricted access to U.S. ships, ports, and cities across the continental United States.
In essence, Prince Albert Edward/King Edward VII had sent his illegitimate son, “John McCann,” to infiltrate the U.S. Navy, through his own bloodline, so that a descendant could be cultivated, over several generations, to one day become president of the United States.
Based on ship manifests and passenger records, both at Ellis Island and the Port of Seattle, John McCann infiltrated the country as a “royal spy” until his alter ego, “John McCain,” took his place, no later than April 26, 1924.
A 1907 passenger record from Ellis Island, shows that John McCann claimed (it appears truthfully) that he was born in 1865. On this record, his declared ethnicity was “U.S.,” and his last place of residence was “New York.” Unfortunately, the passenger manifest reads: “No Image Available.”
This is one year after JS McCain I was supposedly traveling with the U.S. Navy after his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, in 1906.
Something appears missing from the passenger manifest. Whatever it was—a photo, perhaps—was probably very damning.
McCann also indicated marital status as “M” for married.
JS McCain I supposedly married Katherine Davey Vaulx in Colorado Springs August 9, 1909. Yet the Ellis Island document referred to above clearly indicates John McCann (aka “John McCain”) was married when he arrived in New York on the S.S.Furnessia in 1907. His wife is alternately referred to as “Mrs. John McCann” and “Mrs. McCann” on several transatlantic voyages, including one in 1893 and another in 1895. Both McCanns, upon each arrival, stated they were “U.S. citizens of Irish descent living in New York City.”
On April 24, 1893, “Mrs. John McCann,” age 28, declared her “Irish” heritage, though she stated she lived in New York City. On April 29, 1895, “Mrs. McCann,” age 30, again declared her origin as “Irish.” In either case, she would have been born in 1865.
One wonders what special dispensation “Mrs. McCann” was afforded that permitted her to enter the United States without declaring her first name.
John McCann’s name does not appear in the master index in 1893, though his name does appear on the passenger manifest.
On a subsequent arrival at Ellis Island some five years later, more incriminating evidence appeared on a document which again substantiated his birthdate as 1865.
Two additional birth records of “John McCann” in Renfrew, Scotland, named his parents as “Peter McCann” and “Bridget.” In another birth record for “John McCann,” also in 1865, his parents are “Patrick McCann” and “Bridget Graves.”
Both records serve to obfuscate the father’s identity, while stretching the limits of plausibility. What are the odds that both “Peter” and “Patrick” McCann of Renfrew are married to “Bridget” and have a son named “John McCann” born in 1865?
Both records are attempts at further obscuring the identity of the real parents, Prince Albert/Edward VII and one of his mistresses, most likely Lady Randolph Churchill.
As of 1924, no additional references to this John McCann or his wife Mrs. John McCann have surfaced in passenger manifests or public records. These birth anomalies, coupled with the crew’s list records and passenger manifests from 1892-1924, show that “John McCann” and JS McCain I were the same person, but could not have attended school in the U.S. or gotten married in Colorado Springs.
We have also established that the true birth dates for JS McCain I and Katherine Davey Vaulx McCain are significantly different than those declared in falsified, duplicitous documents and biographies.
Next month, we will pick up the story with the father of JS McCain III and continue through to the birth of a future senator and his “heroic” military career.