There have been many questions about President Barack Obama’s ancestral roots. But now new light has been shed on this issue, thanks to new advances in genealogical research tools.
(Photo by Rajah Bose for The New York Times) Mark Bunch (above), who directs his family’s online lineage project, said of President Obama, “I’m his fifth cousin twice removed.”
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Published: July 30, 2012
“President Obama’s biography — son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — has long suggested that unlike most African-Americans, his roots did not include slavery.”
“Now a team of genealogists is upending that thinking, saying that Mr. Obama’s mother had, in addition to her European ancestors, at least one African forebear and that the president is most likely descended from one of the first documented African slaves in the United States.”
“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.”
(Photo by Rajah Bose for The New York Times) One tool used by a team of genealogists over the course of two years was an online database maintained by the Bunch family.
For the complete New York Times article, please click on the link: http://nyti.ms/QBu6FP
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