Bill Gates, the third richest man in the world, is no doubt an American but his roots are in Britain's Halifax town, according to a genealogist.
Historian David Glover, who first traced US President George W Bush's roots to Calderdale, has now shot a letter to the Microsoft founder to tell him that his ancestors came from Halifax in Yorkshire.
In fact, the link was made while Glover was looking at details of descendants of Puritan families from around Halifax town who emigrated to Massachusetts in the 1630s.
According to him, the research actually goes back 11 generations to Gates' great grandfather Jonas Halstead, born in 1611, the youngest son of Abraham, a yeoman clothier from the nearby town of Northowram.
The Halsteads were a Puritan family in the area and became increasingly disturbed about the direction the parish church in Halifax was taking.
"The final straw seems to be the appointment of a very high church priest. Jonas joined a number of people from the area who sailed from Bristol in May 1635 for Boston, arriving 12 weeks later," British newspaper 'The Daily Telegraph' quoted Glover as saying.
Halstead lived in Connecticut for some time before finally moving to New York where he became a land speculator. His descendants include the Maxwell family, popularly known as the Seattle bankers.
Gates' grandfather was James Willard Maxwell Junior and his mother Mary Maxwell. He himself was born in Seattle in the year 1955.
Though he stepped down as Microsoft's chief executive officer in January, 2000, Gates still remains as a part-time and non-executive Chairman and devotes full-time to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he established eight years ago.
