Obama descends from first African-American slave

[septimus]

A recent report from Ancestry.com concludes, with considerable evidence, that Barack Obama is descended from the first known African-American slave.

As seen at many on-line pedigrees, Barack Obama’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was Anna Bunch (1814-1893) of Tennessee and Arkansas. (It may be interesting to note that, as uterine ancestress, she provides Obama’s mt-DNA, but it is irrelevant here, as it is Anna’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father who is of interest.)

There is much evidence that the early Bunch family was described as “mulattos”; Obama even alludes to this in his autobiography, though the “shame” recalled to him was about a “full-blooded Cherokee.”

John Bunch [Obama’s direct ancestor] and Sarah Slayden, a white woman, petitioned the Council of Virginia on 16 Aug 1705 to allow them to marry because the Minister of Blisland Parish had refused to marry them because of the minister believed John Bunch a mulatto …
… [because of] the quandary it caused the court, the following month the General Court of Virginia issued a decree that defined the term “mulatto” in Virginia as any person who had a black parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent (one-eighth black). This legal definition would stand for two more centuries; it was the direct result of President Obama’s ancestor attempting to receive the same legal benefit offered to white people.

DNA testing shows multiple branches of the Bunch family to have a Y-chromosome haplogroup common in West Africa and very rare among Europeans.

All this is pretty clear. The paper then goes farther, speculating (with considerable circumstantial evidence) that John Bunch (above) was son of another known John Bunch, and that he in turn was son of a John Punch, who achieved “fame” in 1640 when he escaped from indentured servitude with two other men, was recaptured and punished. A court ruled that the two white servants

shall first serve out their times with their master according to their Indentures and one whole year apiece after the time of their service is Expired … the third being a Negro named John Punch shall serve his said master and his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.

(Disclaimer: Is it a symptom of autism that I find useless genealogic trivia to be interesting? In any event, this hobby is less expensive than some hobbies, and much more tolerable for Mrs. Septimus. )

[JKellyMap]

Fascinating! Thank you.
I often remind people that Obama married into the African-American cultural realm, but he is in almost no way personally from that himself (originally). It has little to do with this, really, but it is cool to find out that, actually, via his white mother, he actually (like many white Americans) DOES have some African-American genetic background.

(Obviously, I’m using “African American” here in it’s “normal” sense, not the little-used sense which would include, say, Charlize Theron, or its other little-used sense, which would include Obama as the direct product of an African and an American.)