Genealogists: "Obama's Mama Probably Descends From Virginia's First Slave"

Genealogists: Obama likely has black ancestry from both of his parents

There is a strong possibility that John Punch, a 17th-century slave, is U.S. President Barack Obama's 11th-great-grandfather. I guess this news shouldn't be surprising, given that geneticists have separately found that about 30% of self-identified white Americans have traceable black African ancestry within the last eight generations. As an example, actors Johnny Depp and Krista Allen descend from Elizabeth Key Grinstead, the first enslaved black/mulatto woman to successfully sue for her freedom in 1656. From The New York Times: "The findings are scheduled to be announced on Monday by Ancestry.com, a genealogy company based in Provo, Utah. Its team, while lacking definitive proof, said it had evidence that 'strongly suggests' Mr. Obama’s family tree — on his mother’s side — stretches back nearly four centuries to a slave in colonial Virginia named John Punch. In 1640, Mr. Punch, then an indentured servant, escaped from Virginia and went to Maryland. He was captured there and, along with two white servants who had also escaped, was put on trial. His punishment — servitude for life — was harsher than what the white servants received, and it has led some historians to regard him as the first African to be legally sanctioned as a slave, years before Virginia adopted laws allowing slavery."

More: "The Ancestry.com team used DNA analysis to make the connection, and it also combed through marriage and property records to trace Mr. Obama’s maternal ancestry to the time and place where Mr. Punch lived. The company said records suggested that Mr. Punch fathered children with a white woman, who passed her free status on to those children, giving rise to a family of a slightly different name, the Bunches, that ultimately spawned Mr. Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham."

The article continues about President Obama's family: "The Ancestry.com team spent two years examining Mr. Obama’s mother’s past, focusing on the mixed-race Bunch line. The researchers said that over time, as the Bunches continued to intermarry, they became prominent landowners in colonial Virginia and were known as white. 'We sort of stumbled across it,' said Anastasia Harman, the lead researcher. 'We were just doing general research into the president’s family tree, and as we started digging back in time, we realized that the Bunch family were African-American.'"

President Barack Obama's fifth cousin, twice removed, comes into the mix: "One reason the Ancestry.com team could make the connection was the Bunch family itself. The extended family maintains an online database that traces the family tree. It is supplemented by DNA testing showing that the men in the family have genetic markers [Y chromosome] consistent with sub-Saharan African descent. The Ancestry.com paper said the Bunches’ particular DNA profile was common in Cameroon. 'I consider myself Caucasian, but I find that my mixed-race roots go way back,' said Mark Bunch, who administers the Bunch family project."

Booker Rising response: As far as definitive proof....This revelation comes from Obama's mother's mother's side of the family. Couldn't researchers just compare U.S. President Barack Obama's DNA (or his living maternal great-uncle Charles Payne's DNA, in order to rule out any Kenyan possibility and because I'm sure the Secret Service doesn't like President Obama's DNA floating out there) to the living Bunch clan to see if there's a genetic match? President Obama nor Charles Payne would've inherited the Y chromosome as the Bunch males did, because their latest Bunch ancestor (Anna Bunch, b. 1814-1893) was female. However, they could still do an autosomal test to see if (1) they share DNA matches with the living Bunches; and (2) if any matches are African in origin.