The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Obama May Have Ties to ...

...on his mother's side of the family.

According to new genealogical research by Ancestry.com, Barack Obama's family tree on his mother's side can be traced to a slave in colonial Virginia named John Punch.? The New York Times is on the case.? A taste:

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 findings come as more and more Americans are discovering their own mixed-race heritage. Elizabeth Shown Mills, a former president of the American Society of Genealogists, said the Internet, coupled with the ease of DNA testing and heightened interest among both amateur and professional genealogists, was helping to reveal the extent of racial intermingling over the centuries.

?It is becoming increasingly common now because people are discovering it,? Ms. Mills said. ?In the past, very few records were available. Very few people made the effort to do the research.?

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.

Source: http://www.philipvickersfithian.com/2012/07/obama-may-have-ties-to-american-slavery.html

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