Barack Obama's Ancestry
Thursday, 4 August 2021 marked the 60th birthday of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. He has some
interesting ancestry so let's look at it.
Maternal side (his mother's side)
In 2007, a year before Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States, Megan Smolenyak discovered that the man who would become America's first African-American president had Irish ancestry, a trait shared with John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Grover Cleveland just to name a few. The ancestry links were found primarily in Moneygall, Co Offaly where they found maternal ancestors of Obama like Falmouth Kearney (Barack's great times 3 grandfather), who at the age of 19, left for the United States in 1850. Subsequent maternal ancestors of the Kearney family went to Dublin and made profits through a wig-making business while relatives in King's County (County Offaly's colonial name) made shoes. Falmouth's father had been waiting in America for his son, having taking a boat to New York from Liverpool in 1849. The rest of the Kearneys followed suit in 1851. Census records in the US dating back to 1860 show Falmouth had a family in Deerfield, Ohio with a woman named Charlotte. He reappears on the U.SS. Census in 1870 this time in Tipton County, Indiana. On this two occasions, Falmouth was listed as a farmer. One of Falmouth's five daughters, Mary Ann is the great times 2 grandmother of Barack Obama as her grandson Stanley Dunham was the father of Barack's mother Stanley Ann Dunham. Barack Obama would visit Moneygall in May 2011 on a day trip to Ireland during his first term as President and a service station that features a museum about the maternal ancestors of Obama was opened in June 2014.
Paternal side (his father's side)
On the paternal (father's) side of Barack's family, there are members of the Luo people in Kenya where the family is concentrated in Nyanza, a province in the west of Kenya.
Barack's father who was also called Barack Obama was born in Kenya when it was under British rule as Barack Obama in 1934. Barack Sr met and dated Stanley Ann and despite opposition from both families, they had Barack Jr (the future US President) in Hawaii in 1961 after marrying on the island of Maui. The Obamas were in Hawaii at the time of Barack's birth as they were students at the University of Hawaii on a special government sponsored programme. Barack Sr. divorced Stanley Ann who was granted custody of Barack Jr in 1964 and had a family with Jewish-American Ruth Beatrice Baker who joined in Kenya. The couple had two sons. Before meeting Stanley Ann, Barack Sr had a family with Kezia Aoko in Kenya with whom he had Malik and Auma in the 1950s.
Interestingly, Barack Obama's paternal grandfather Hussein Obama (a cook) survived a British Gulag set up by the British in the late 1940s out of fear of uprisings. Hussein fought for the British Empire by joining the King's African Rifles in both World Wars.