According to the genealogists at ancestry.com, President Obama may very well be a descendant of America's first documented slave, John Punch. According to reports, John Punch is the 11th great-grandfather of President Obama, on his mothers side. Apparently, President Obama's mother is a direct-descendant of John Punch through a family by the name of Bunch.
John Punch was originally an indentured servant in Colonial Virginia when he was punished for trying to escape in 1640. Punch was declared to be a slave for life. This is the first documented case of slavery in American history.
Ancestry.com genealogist Joseph Shumway told USA today, "Two of the most historically significant African Americans in the history of our country are amazingly directly related."
The White House has not yet commented on the story.
According to ancestry.com:
President Obama is traditionally viewed as an African-American because of his father's heritage in Kenya. However, while researching his Caucasian mother, Stanley Ann Dunham's lineage, Ancestry.com genealogists found her to have African heritage as well, which piqued the researchers' interest and inspired further digging into Obama's African-American roots.
In tracing the family back from Obama's mother, Ancestry.com used DNA analysis to learn that her ancestors, known as white landowners in Colonial Virginia, actually descended from an African man. Existing records suggest that this man, John Punch, had children with a white woman who then passed her free status on to their offspring. Punch's descendants went on to be free, successful land owners in a Virginia entrenched in slavery.
An expert in Southern research and past president of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, Elizabeth Shown Mills, performed a third-party review of the research and documentation to verify the findings.
"In reviewing Ancestry.com's conclusions, I weighed not only the actual findings but also Virginia's laws and social attitudes when John Punch was living," said Mills. "A careful consideration of the evidence convinces me that the Y-DNA evidence of African origin is indisputable, and the surviving paper trail points solely to John Punch as the logical candidate.
Genealogical research on individuals who lived hundreds of years ago can never definitively prove that one man fathered another, but this research meets the highest standards and can be offered with confidence."