Barack Obama’s mother ‘probably the descendant of a black slave’

Records state that Mr Punch had children with a white woman, who passed her “free” status on to their offspring. They went on to be successful landowners in Virginia, where slavery was later widespread.

DNA tests carried out by the researchers for ancestry.com, suggest that Mr Punch’s mixed-race descendants altered their name to Bunch, a family known to be among Ms Dunham’s forebears.

While the destruction of some records means there is no absolute proof, the researchers said DNA evidence and records of another branch of the Bunch family being “mulatto” left them confident.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, a past president of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, who carried out an independent review of the study, said the “evidence of African origin is indisputable” in the Bunch line. “The surviving paper trail points solely to John Punch as the logical candidate,” she added.

Jamal Simmons, a political analyst specialising in race who worked for Bill Clinton, the former president, said the findings showed accusations Mr Obama was somehow “not black enough” to be practically meaningless.

“This is more evidence of how intertwined the lives and histories of Americans really are,” Mr Simmons told The Daily Telegraph. “We really have become that mixing bowl of cultures. That used not to be so accepted, but the negative connotations are fading as more people discover their roots.”

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