George W. Romney

A more distant kinsman was George Romney (1734–1802), a noted portrait painter in Britain during the last quarter of the 18th century.

His maternal grandfather was Helaman Pratt (1846–1909), who presided over the Mormon mission in Mexico City before moving to the Mexican state of Chihuahua and who was the son of original Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt (1807–1857).

Romney's parents, Gaskell Romney (1871–1955) and Anna Amelia Pratt (1876–1926), were United States citizens and natives of the Territory of Utah.

They practiced monogamy (polygamy having been abolished by the 1890 Manifesto, although it persisted in places, especially Mexico).

George had three older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister.

Gaskell Romney was a successful carpenter, house builder, and farmer who headed the most prosperous family in the colony, which was situated in an agricultural valley below the Sierra Madre Occidental.

The family chose U.S. citizenship for their children, including George.

George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and politician.

They married in 1895 in Mexico and lived in Colonia Dublán in Nuevo Casas Grandes in the state of Chihuahua (one of the Mormon colonies in Mexico), where George was born on July 8, 1907.

The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910 and the Mormon colonies were endangered in 1911–1912 by raids from marauders, including "Red Flaggers" Pascual Orozco and José Inés Salazar.

Young George heard the sound of distant gunfire and saw rebels walking through the village streets.

The Romney family fled and returned to the United States in July 1912, leaving their home and almost all of their property behind.

Romney later said, "We were the first displaced persons of the 20th century."

In the United States, Romney grew up in humble circumstances.

The family subsisted with other Mormon refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas, benefiting from a $100,000 fund for refugees that the U.S. Congress had set up.

After a few months they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter.

In the 1920s, Romney's uncle Rey L. Pratt (1878–1931) played a major role in the preservation and expansion of the Mormon presence in Mexico and in its introduction to South America.

In 1939, he moved to Detroit and joined the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, where he served as the chief spokesman for the automobile industry during World War II and headed a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share production improvements.

He joined Nash-Kelvinator Corporation in 1948, and became the chief executive of its successor, American Motors, in 1954.

There he turned around the struggling firm by focusing all efforts on the compact Rambler car.

Romney mocked the products of the "Big Three" automakers as "gas-guzzling dinosaurs" and became one of the first high-profile, media-savvy business executives.

Devoutly religious, he presided over the Detroit stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A member of the Republican Party, he served as chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and 3rd secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973.

Having entered politics in 1961 by participating in a state constitutional convention to rewrite the Michigan Constitution, Romney was elected Governor of Michigan in 1962.

Re-elected by increasingly large margins in 1964 and 1966, he worked to overhaul the state's financial and revenue structure, greatly expanding the size of state government and introducing Michigan's first state income tax.

Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement.

He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election.

He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riot.

After a mid-1967 remark that his earlier support for the Vietnam War had been due to a "brainwashing" by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, his campaign faltered even more and he withdrew from the contest in early 1968.

After being elected president, Nixon appointed Romney as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Romney's ambitious plans, which included housing production increases for the poor and open housing to desegregate suburbs, were modestly successful but often thwarted by Nixon.

Initially a front runner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in the 1968 election cycle, he proved an ineffective campaigner and fell behind Richard Nixon in polls.

Romney left the administration at the start of Nixon's second term in 1973.

Returning to private life, he advocated volunteerism and public service and headed the National Center for Voluntary Action and its successor organizations from 1973 through 1991.

He also served as a regional representative of the Twelve within his church.

Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States with their children owing to the federal government's prosecution of polygamy.

He was the father of Mitt Romney, who is the former governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican presidential nominee currently serving as the United States senator from Utah; the husband of 1970 U.S. Senate candidate Lenore Romney; and the paternal grandfather of current Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.

Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico; events during the Mexican Revolution forced his family to flee back to the United States when he was a child.

The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they struggled during the Great Depression.

Romney worked in a number of jobs, served as a Mormon missionary in the United Kingdom, and attended several colleges in the U.S. but did not graduate from any of them.