In First Lady's Roots, A Complex Path From Slavery

U.S. President Barack Obama's family tree - which straddles the voluntary immigration from Europe and Africa - has long been researched and can be traced back to the early 1600s. However, much less has been known about U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama's genealogy, the Obama half whose family history of involuntary immigration is a lot more like the typical African American. Mrs. Obama didn't know much about her family history. You may recall during the presidential campaign, when researchers uncovered one of her paternal great-great-grandfathers, who was born in 1850 in South Carolina. Well, researchers have now traced her ancestry further back to her maternal great-great-great-grandfather Peter Jumper in 1798-1800, and fleshed out much more of the family tree. While Mrs. Obama's office and her relatives refused to comment on the story due to its personal nature, the New York Times discusses the new findings (hat tip: Drudge Report).

There are still quite a few gaps in Mrs. Obama's family tree (mainly on her father's side), but tracing back to circa 1798 is extremely good for African American genealogy. At least on Mrs. Obama's mother's side, researchers got over the infamous 1860 Wall. Given Census records, it looks like at least two of her black great-great-grandparents were free before the Civil War. Researchers dug up a white great-great--great-grandfather (name unknown, but the children of her great-great-great-grandmother Melvinia Shields McGruder, who was a 14- or 15-year-old slave at the time that she gave birth to Mrs. Obama's ancestor, are listed in Census records as mulatto). They interviewed folks who personally knew Ms. McGruder's son and who had photos of him. They show how Ms. Melvinia McGruder in the 30s or 40s even reunited with former slaves from her childhood on her first plantation, where she was sold away from at age six.The researchers also claim that there is Native American ancestry, but don't specify.

The known jobs of Mrs. Obama's relatives (beyond her parents) were slaves, Bible bookstore worker, lunch truck operator, painter, carpentry business owner, syrup factory worker, nurse, tailor, preacher, cook, seamstress, washerwoman, maid, farm laborer, postal clerk.

Researchers have compiled 31 genealogical documents: a slaveowner's will, documentation listing specific relatives as property, and of course the usual Census documents, death certifcates, marriage certificates, and obituaries. There's an interactive family tree. They're also asking the public, especially folks who may have ties to Mrs. Obama's family tree or info on her ancestral locales, if they can fill in any gaps. Mrs. Obama's paternal line comes out of Georgetown, South Carolina and Louisiana. Her maternal line comes out of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. On her father's side, the family surnames are Robinson, Johnson, Cohen, Moten, and Don. On her mother's side, the family surnames are Shields, Davies, Easley, Humphrey, Jumper, Laws/Lawson, McGruder, Morehead, Thornton, Tinsley and Wade. Both sides moved en masse to the North (Chicago) during the Great Migration.

I understand Mrs. Obama's decision to stay mum, but getting this kind of research for free is fantastic! Perhaps the next step is a DNA test to trace specific African ancestry? Also, if there is a direct patrilineal descendant of the mulatto Dolphus Shields (e.g., the Granny-In-Chief's brother, if she has one and he is still alive), a Y-chromosome test might nail down that white ancestor and reveal who knows what. It's a good bet that the slaveowner Henry Shields or one of his four sons was the daddy, so I'd be tracking down the white Shields family's descendants first (assuming they will cooperate, which is certainly no guarantee).