• On the 4th of August 1961, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan
father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. and an American mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

• Obama highlights thus, the diversity of his family tree: "It's like a little mini-United
Nations. I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret
Thatcher".

• Obama's parents met in 1960 at the University of Hawaii and married in 1961 but soon
divorced. Obama's father moved to Connecticut before returning to Kenya, where he remarried and had
two more sons, David Ndesandjo and Mark Ndesandjo. Obama's mother remarried an Indonesian, Lolo
Soetoro and the family moved to Indonesia along with Obama and his half-sister Maya Soetoro.

• In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Stanley Armour
Dunham and Madelyn, one of the first female Vice-Presidents of the Bank of Hawaii. 

• Obama's maternal heritage consists mostly of English ancestry, with traces of German,
Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Swiss and French ancestry. His maternal grandfather is related to James
Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, who were
all U.S presidents.

• Obama's paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama was a Christian mission cook and
herbalist who later embraced Islam. Being an avid traveler, he had visited Europe, India and
Zanzibar while he was recruited to fight for colonial power England during World War I.

• On his paternal side, Obama's lineage can be traced back to the early descendants of the
Luo tribal king.


• According 1850 Census records from Kentucky, Barack Obama's great-great-great-great
grandfather, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves, a 15 year-old girl and a 25-year-old man.
The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall,
also owned two black slaves, a 60 year-old man and a 58 year-old woman.

Politcks