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Ancestry of Barack Obama

By , About.com Guide

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother. According to the U.S. Senate Historical Office, he was the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history and the first African American President.

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First Generation:

1. Barack Hussein OBAMA was born on 4 August 1961 at the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein OBAMA, Sr. of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Stanley Ann DUNHAM of Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. When Barack Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father moved to Massachusetts to continue his education before returning to Kenya.

In 1964, Barack Obama's mother married Lolo Soetoro, a tennis-playing graduate student, and later an oil manager, from the Indonesian island of Java. Soetoro's student visa was revoked in 1966 because of political unrest in Indonesia, breaking up the new family. After graduating with a degree in anthropology the following year, Ann and her young son, Barack, joined her husband in Jakarta, Indonesia. Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro was born after the family moved to Indonesia. Four years later, Ann sent Barack back to the United States to live with his maternal grandmother.

Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he met his future wife, Michelle Robinson. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Second Generation (Parents):

2. Barack Hussein OBAMA Sr. was born in 1936 in Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya and died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya in 1982, leaving three wives, six sons and a daughter. All but one of his children live in Britain or the United States. One of the brothers died in 1984. He is buried in the village of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya.

3. Stanley Ann DUNHAM was born on 27 November 1942 in Wichita, Kansas and died 7 November 1995 of ovarian cancer.

Barack Hussein OBAMA Sr. and Stanley Ann DUNHAM were married in 1960 in Hawaii and had the following children:

    1 i. Barack Hussein OBAMA, Jr.

Third Generation (Grandparents):

4. Hussein Onyango OBAMA was born about 1895 and died in 1979. Before settling down to work as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi he was a traveler. Recruited to fight for colonial power England in World War I, he visited Europe and India, and afterward lived for a time in Zanzibar, where he converted from Christianity to Islam, family members said.

5. Akumu

Hussein Onyango OBAMA had several wives. His first wife was Helima, with whom he had no children. Second, he married Akuma and they had the following children:

    i. Sarah OBAMA
    1. ii. Barack Hussein OBAMA, Sr.
    iii. Auma OBAMA
Onyango's third wife was Sarah, the one often referred to by Barack as his "grandmother." She was the primary caregiver for Barack OBAMA Sr. after his mother, Akuma, left the family when her children were still young.
6. Stanley Armour DUNHAM was born on 23 March 1918 in Kansas and died 8 February 1992 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is buried in Punchbowl National Cemetery, Honolulu, Hawaii.

7. Madelyn Lee PAYNE was born in 1922 in Wichita, Kansas and died 3 November 2008 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Stanley Armour DUNHAM and Madelyn Lee PAYNE were married on 5 May 1940, and had the following children:

    3. i. Stanley Ann DUNHAM

Next > Great Grandparents of Barack Obama

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