# Who, if anyone, was Michelle Obama's most recent ancestor who was a slave **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 29, 2016, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163 "2016-07-29T02:07:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/1 "2016-07-29T02:07:56Z")
Does Barack Obama have any black US slave ancestors? I’d doubt it since his black father is from Kenya. He may have had some removed cousins. My question is about Michelle Obama, does anyone know how far back you’d have to go in her lineage to find a slave? Would it be her great-great-great-grandparent? ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/2 "2016-07-29T02:18:58Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Does Barack Obama have any black US slave ancestors? I’d doubt it since his black father is from Kenya. He may have had some removed cousins. > > My question is about Michelle Obama, does anyone know how far back you’d have to go in her lineage to find a slave? Would it be her great-great-great-grandparent? Don’t have an answer for you - but serious question - why does it matter? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/3 "2016-07-29T02:20:23Z")
> [@simster](#): > > Don’t have an answer for you - but serious question - why does it matter? It doesn’t have to matter to ask the question. She’s a public figure, she mentioned slavery in a speech the other day, people may be curious. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/4 "2016-07-29T02:27:34Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > It doesn’t have to matter to ask the question. She’s a public figure, she mentioned slavery in a speech the other day, people may be curious. I get that - and I wasn’t suggesting that it ‘mattered’ - but I was just curious as to the context for the question itself - If someone was fact checking a claim, or something to that affect. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/5 "2016-07-29T02:30:55Z")
According to the wiki for Marian Shields Robinson, Michelle’s mother: > [@](#): > > Her ancestors had moved from Georgia to Chicago in the early 20th century during the Great Migration. Marian was born in 1937. Conceivably a great-grandparent of Michelle was born a slave, and one more generation would have been in the right time frame although still not long before emancipation if they were slaves. So assuming slave ancestry up until emancipation, great-great-great-grandparent would be likely. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/6 "2016-07-29T02:31:03Z")
In her speech she mentioned the white house being built by slaves, they are the first black presidential family. I’m wondering how far back you have to go to find an ancestor who was a slave. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/7 "2016-07-29T02:35:11Z")
Apparently it was her great-great-grandfather, Dolphus Shields, who was born in Georgia in 1860. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/8 "2016-07-29T02:35:34Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Does Barack Obama have any black US slave ancestors? I’d doubt it since his black father is from Kenya. He may have had some removed cousins. > > My question is about Michelle Obama, does anyone know how far back you’d have to go in her lineage to find a slave? Would it be her great-great-great-grandparent? > **[Michelle Obama’s family tree has roots in a Carolina slave plantation](https://www.chicagotribune.com/2008/12/01/michelle-obamas-family-tree-has-roots-in-a-carolina-slave-plantation/)** > > GEORGETOWN, S.C.—Tiny wooden cabins line the dirt road once known as Slave Street as it winds its way through Friendfield Plantation. More than 200 slaves lived in the whitewashed shacks in t… ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/9 "2016-07-29T02:38:25Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Does Barack Obama have any black US slave ancestors? [According to some research](http://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/2012/10/08/obama-related-to-americas-first-slave/), he does, but it’s through his white mother: > [@](#): > > This discovery follow years of research by Ancestry genealogists who, using early Virginia records and DNA analysis, linked Obama to John Punch. Punch was an indentured servant in Colonial Virginia who fled to escape servitude in 1640. After he was caught, his punishment was enslavement for life. Punch’s is the first documented case of slavery for life in the colonies, occurring decades before slavery laws were enacted in Virginia. > > 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, Ancestry genealogists found her to have African heritage as well. Their interest piqued, the researchers kept digging. DNA analysis helped confirm that Dunham’s 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. Some of Punch’s descendants went on to be free, successful land owners in a Virginia entrenched in slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/10 "2016-07-29T02:40:13Z")
Also, there are reports that Barack’s mother was descended from John Punch, the first documented slave in the American colonies. > **[John Punch (slave) | Descendants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_(slave)#Descendants)** > > Drawing on a combination of historical documents and autosomal DNA analysis, Ancestry.com stated in July 2012 that it is a strong likelihood that 44th United States President Barack Obama is an eleventh-great-grandson of Punch via Obama's mother, Ann Dunham. > Genealogical research indicates that some time in the 1630s, Punch married a white woman, likely also an indentured servant. By 1637 he had fathered a son called John Bunch (labelled by genealogists as "John Bunch I"). While researchers cann... ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/11 "2016-07-29T03:14:38Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > [According to some research](http://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/2012/10/08/obama-related-to-americas-first-slave/), he does, but it’s through his white mother: How much weight do you put on this evidence, from [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) (a commercial, not scientific enterprise)? Seems like a bit of hand-waving to me. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/12 "2016-07-29T03:51:04Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > How much weight do you put on this evidence, from [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) (a commercial, not scientific enterprise)? Seems like a bit of hand-waving to me. There’s a link at the bottom of the page to their research, including a 45-page article. Why don’t you read it and report back to us.😉 Geneology is history, not science. I don’t see any reason in principle why a commercial site dedicated to it might not have professional capacity in the field. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/13 "2016-07-29T07:05:36Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > There’s a link at the bottom of the page to their research, including a 45-page article. Why don’t you read it and report back to us.😉 > > Geneology is history, not science. I don’t see any reason in principle why a commercial site dedicated to it might not have professional capacity in the field. I read most of that article several years ago [and reported on it at SDMB](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=661610). Another genealogist suspects that Ralphe Bunche, the Nobel-prize winning diplomat, was also an agnatic descendant of the same Bunch family. (His son Ralph Bunche, Jr., would be in his 70’s if still alive. Has he had his Y-chromosome tested?) ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-if-anyone-was-michelle-obamas-most-recent-ancestor-who-was-a-slave/761163/14 "2016-07-29T09:29:32Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Geneology is history, not science. I don’t see any reason in principle why a commercial site dedicated to it might not have professional capacity in the field. I agree about the commercial/professional distinction, but anyone who had dabbled in genealogy will be aware that it is easy to make false assumptions that can lead one off into a totally wrong tree, never mind, branch. Finding a marriage record of someone with a nearly correct name (spelling was highly variable) on the right date and in the correct place, is not evidence that that particular person was actually the one being looked for. So, yes it may be history, but it is necessary to apply scientific rigor as well.