Warren Campaign Offered Cousin's Cookbook as Proof of Native American Ancestry

You can’t make this stuff up.

On May 1, according to a Boston Herald article, the Warren Campaign offered two pieces of evidence they said supported Ms. Warren’s claim of Native American ancestry. The first, a statement by genealogist Chris Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Society has now been thoroughly debunked in an article that ran Friday here at Breitbart, and another article that same day at Legal Insurrection.

The second piece of evidence was equally suspect. The Warren Campaign offered reporters an undated article from the Muskogee Phoenix about the contributions of Elizabeth Warren’s first cousin, Mrs. James P. Rowsey, to the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma as proof of Ms. Warren’s Native American ancestry:

The campaign also hastily produced an undated newspaper clip last night from the Muskogee Sunday Phoenix detailing a “Mrs. James P. Rowsey” — who they said is Warren’s cousin — and her involvement with the Five Civilized Tribes Museum, which is dedicated to preserving Native American art.

“Mrs. James P. Rowsey was Elizabeth’s first cousin — shared the grandparents in question,” a campaign official said in the statement.

A little research confirmed that Mrs. James P. Rowsey – Janyne “Candy” Carnes Rowsey (1932-2002)–was indeed Ms. Warren’s first cousin. Both are grandchildren of Harry Gunn Reed and Bethanie Elvina Crawford.  Further research showed that Mrs. Rowsey’s most well known contribution to the Five Civilized Tribes Museum involved editing and publishing a cookbook in 1984 — Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes from Families of the Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek & Seminole.

Pow Wow Chow remains in print, and can be purchased at Amazon, the Five Civilized Tribes Museum, and All Things Cherokee.

Emails sent to genealogist Chris Child and spokesman Tom Champoux of the New England Historic Genealogical Society asking for comments on this latest development in the Elizabeth Warren ancestry story were unreturned.

Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.