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jamese777

(546 posts)
1. John Punch & Barack Obama
Mon Nov 7, 2016, 02:37 PM
Nov 2016

President Obama may very well be related to the first African to be enslaved in what was to become the United States. Interestingly the connection is on his mother's side of the family tree.
http://c.mfcreative.com/offer/us/obama_bunch/PDF/punch_tree_final.pdf

"John Punch (fl. 1630s, living 1640) was an enslaved African who lived in the Colony of Virginia during the seventeenth century. In July 1640, the Virginia Governor's Council sentenced him to serve for the remainder of his life as punishment for running away to Maryland. In contrast, two European men who ran away with him were sentenced to longer indentures but not the permanent loss of their freedom. For this reason, historians consider John Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies,"and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake." Historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony, and a key milestone in the development of the institution of slavery in the United States."--Wikipedia

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John Punch & Barack Obama jamese777 Nov 2016 #1
Kick YoungDemCA Nov 2016 #2
K&R Quayblue Nov 2016 #3
I am happy to see that neither my WhiteTara Dec 2016 #4
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