March 4, 1933: Roosevelt becomes U.S. president

While Johnson Controls has hosted two U.S. presidents (George W. Bush and Barack Obama) in recent years, another "U.S. president/Johnson Controls" connection from years past concerns the common ancestry of Johnson Controls' founder Warren S. Johnson and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt, who began on March 4, 1933 what would become the longest term in office of any U.S. president, was descended from English, Dutch and Huguenot (French) stock.

His family tree appeared in a book entitled "The Roosevelt Omnibus," which in turn was reproduced in a book commissioned by Warren Johnson's son in the 1940s on the genealogy of the Johnson family entitled "Genealogy of Captain John Johnson of Roxbury, Massachusetts." Identified within these genealogies was the common ancestor who linked both Warren Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt, namely, Captain John Johnson.

John Johnson was born about 1590 in (or near) Hertfordshire, England, and immigrated to North America in 1630, landing at Salem, Massachusetts. As the book documents, Captain John Johnson was one of Warren Johnson's great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfathers; and he also happened to be a 7x great grandfather of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on his mother's side.

Although Warren Johnson died more than twenty years before FDR began his presidency, and it's unlikely that Warren Johnson knew during his lifetime of his connection to the young politician from Hyde Park, their common ancestry lives on in the pages of the Johnson genealogy.