Six degrees of separation ... or less
Obama’s purported link to early American slave is latest twist in family tree
By Krissah Thompson, WashPost, Updated: Monday, July 30, 3:13 PM
President Obama’s extraordinary family story gained a new layer this week as a team of genealogists found evidence that he is most likely a descendant of one of the first documented African slaves in this country.
The link to slavery, which scholars of genealogy and race in the United States called remarkable, was found to have existed approximately 400 years back in the lineage of Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. It was discovered by a team of four genealogists from Ancestry.com whose findings from two years of work were released in a report Monday.
Using property and tax records, the team uncovered “a lot of context and circumstantial evidence” that points to an enslaved black man named John Punch being Obama’s ancestor, said Joseph Shumway, one of the genealogists who worked on the report.
Because his father immigrated from Kenya and his mother was born in Kansas, Obama was thought to have no direct links to American slavery.
“His tree is one of the most dynamic that we’ve seen as far as diversity,” said Shumway, whose company also helped uncover that the president has Irish ancestry and is a distant cousin of Warren Buffett. “There are so many ways that we’ve been able to find interesting stories and connection points.”
(More here.)
President Obama’s extraordinary family story gained a new layer this week as a team of genealogists found evidence that he is most likely a descendant of one of the first documented African slaves in this country.
The link to slavery, which scholars of genealogy and race in the United States called remarkable, was found to have existed approximately 400 years back in the lineage of Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. It was discovered by a team of four genealogists from Ancestry.com whose findings from two years of work were released in a report Monday.
Using property and tax records, the team uncovered “a lot of context and circumstantial evidence” that points to an enslaved black man named John Punch being Obama’s ancestor, said Joseph Shumway, one of the genealogists who worked on the report.
Because his father immigrated from Kenya and his mother was born in Kansas, Obama was thought to have no direct links to American slavery.
“His tree is one of the most dynamic that we’ve seen as far as diversity,” said Shumway, whose company also helped uncover that the president has Irish ancestry and is a distant cousin of Warren Buffett. “There are so many ways that we’ve been able to find interesting stories and connection points.”
(More here.)
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