You can't escape politics these days. The presidential election seems to pop up everywhere you look: TV, the Internet, our backyards and hometowns — even genealogy.

As this issue's cover story shows, we got caught up in the election fervor, too — but not the knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out brawl being waged by the candidates. Instead, we focused on a lighter side of the Oval Office: presidential pedigrees. Each election season brings a new surge of interest in tracing chief executives' ancestries. Turns out that having a president in your past is more common than you might think. Peruse our four-step guide and learn how to discover your "First Family Ties."