In a 2007 interview with “60 Minutes” the now-presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he couldn’t “imagine anything more awful than polygamy,” when asked about his family’s polygamist-Mormon history, a history that actually roots members of his family to Mexico.
Nearly 100 years ago, the Romney family was divided in two when Mexican revolutionaries forced nearly all Mormons to leave due to the family’s practice of polygamy. Half the family remained in the U.S., while those wishing to continue remain polygamists fled to an already established Mormon colony in Mexico, where Mitt’s great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, settled his part of the family.
As a result of the division, Mitt’s father, George W. Romney was born to American parents in Colonia Dublán, Galeana in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1907. George would go on to become the Governor of Michigan, where Mitt would be born in 1947.
