Ancestry.com Reveals German Roots in President Obama's Family Tree (DNA was used)

ancestry.com ^ | June 4

[restornu]

Family History Web Site Confirms German Ancestry Through President's Sixth Great-Grandfather

PROVO, Utah, /PRNewswire/ -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, has confirmed through historical documents the identities of German ancestors in President Barack Obama's family tree. The discovery was made by an Ancestry.com genealogical research team, which determined that President Obama's 6th maternal great-grandfather Johann Conrad Wolfley was born in Besigheim, Wuerttemberg, Germany, in 1729 (present day Baden-Wuerttemberg).

Genealogists at the No.1 family history Web site revealed that President Obama's German ancestor was born Johann Conrad Wolflin on January 29, 1729. He immigrated in 1750, sailing to America on the ship Patience. Johann Conrad changed his last name to Wolfley once he settled among other German immigrants in Pennsylvania. His son, Ludwig Wolfley, President Obama's 5th great-grandfather, was born in 1766 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This research confirms that President Obama is one of the 17 percent of Americans with German ancestry.*

The key to this discovery is a mid-1700s historical document known as the "Register of Souls," a record that includes information about all individuals belonging to a specific parish. According to this record, in 1745 the Wolflin family resided in Beutelsbach, a village in Wuerttemberg, Germany, near Stuttgart. Listed on the document is young Johann Conrad with his parents, Johann Martin Wolflin and Maria Margaretha (the president's 7th great-grandparents), and siblings.

The "Register of Souls" states that Johann Conrad's father, Johann Martin Wolflin, was a field surgeon, born in 1690, who had a lengthy military career and participated in the battles at Peterwaradein, Temeswar, and Belgrade in 1716-17 during the Austro-Turkish War. He was reportedly hit with an arrow during the Temeswar Siege. The document also indicates that Johann Martin's father, Conrad Wolflin (Obama's 8th great-grandfather), served as a mayor for 30 years.

In recent months, Ancestry.com family history experts have made other fascinating discoveries in President Obama's family tree, including confirmation of his Irish roots and his family connection to the actor Brad Pitt.

"When you begin to research your family's past, you quickly discover that the world's history is your history," said Tim Sullivan, CEO of The Generations Network, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com. "Suddenly the mid-1700s European political struggles or the mass migrations from the Irish famine have direct relevancy to your life - as the actions and decisions of your ancestors ultimately shaped who you are today."

Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource, recently announced that its members have added more than 1 billion people to more than 10 million user-generated family trees on the site since the tree-building and -sharing tools debuted in July 2006. For more information, or to build your family tree and discover your family history, visit www.ancestry.com.

* Source: U.S. Census Bureau, factfinder.census.gov

About Ancestry.com and The Generations Network

The Generations Network, Inc., through its flagship Ancestry.com property, is the world's leading resource for online family history. Ancestry.com has local websites in nine countries and has digitized and put online over 8 billion records and 28,000 historical collections over the past twelve years.

Since July 2006, Ancestry.com users have created 10 million family trees containing 1 billion profiles and 20 million photographs and stories. The Generations Network also includes myfamily.com, Genealogy.com, Rootsweb.ancestry.com, MyCanvas.com, dna.ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Magazine.

More than 9.2 million unique visitors spent over 4.7 million hours on a TGN website in March 2009 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).

[Kowdawg]

AUTUNG, BABY!

[restornu]

This appears another an independent research outside of the Church.

There are many genealogist

[Tennessee Nana]

Wonder why this is in the Religion Forum...

For the first mormon president ???

Yes ???

Oh....

[dfwgator]

"Well to let you in on the family secret, my Grandmother was Dutch."

[Niteflyr]

"Well to let you in on the family secret, my Grandmother was Dutch."

LOL! That movie was so great...made back before political correctness ruined this country...

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

My brother did mine because he is a geneticist. I been pleading with him to into the business of genetic engineering but it have not worked

[Tennessee Nana]

This is about doing geneology it was not met to be political.
_______________________________________

And it’s not meant to be in the Religion Forum...

[restornu]

Tell that to the mods!

[restornu]

It is a lot of fun after the work is done or you start making head way.

It is very time consumming but I am sure those in the field learn many techniques.

It is very rewarding too.

[Julia H.]

I’m related to Obama’s English side (beginning with the Suttons at the earliest), and I’m a distant cousin of pretty much every President of English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish descent (one think I’ve learned from researching my English ancestors is that all English people are related many, many, many times—I guess that’s an effect of living on an island).

Andrew Jackson is my first cousin eight times removed—his mother’s sister Mary (Mollie) Hutchinson is my 7th great grandmother. Jackson was anything but a “man without a family”—he descends from Colonel John Hutchinson the Regicide, and consequently tons of European royalty and nobility.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

The amount of money in that field is infinite.

[restornu]

I guess it goes back to the 6th degree of seperation.

Just makes you wonder why the human race fights, needs to to fight, or have to fight, or forced to fight!?

The Lord sees the bigger picture while some of us here seem to grow more myopic each day.

[Rodamala]

Ah! It all makes sense now!

[cydcharisse]

As soon as the magic name was uttered, it became political.

[celtic gal]

I have done a lot or work on ancestry.com researching my own maternal side. I was orphaned and with the help of a PI I learned who my maternal side is. The father's name is on the records at Catholic Charities but not, it seems on the original birth certificate, so I have no way to get it and the laws of MO are against me inasmuch as my natural mother id now deceased..(oh I did talk with her one time only and she did not deny anything..didn't share information but did not deny it and all I told her was my birth date..)
ANYWAY, with the info provided by the PI I was able to track the maternal side to England, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, France...discovered there are a couple of saints in the lot, many heads of nobility and connections to the Plantagenet line of kings. I tell friends I don't stand on ceremony and we will dispense with all that bowing and scraping stuff.
If one is an Icelander,they are in luck as those folks have kept such detailed genealogy records they can track their ancestry to before rocks. They are amazing!! Point is, with the bit of info that is public knowledge about 0bama's mother and her relatives it would be easy to track that back,time consuming but not really all that hard.
Searching some other races or nationalities is more difficult such as the blacks because of the issue of slavery and the fact that these people were taken from their homeland and families so split up. Also there is some difficulty with the Mexican nationality ( my husband's family) because of the lack of records. If the families have documents or letters or a line they kept there is a way to start.
But even with that said, eventually one can run into dead ends. I ran into dead ends with the men of my maternal side but the women had many more links that I could track back. Then too, there are others doing the same research on family names and with all of this information found ones work can be cross checked.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

It's one of those hobbies where the people who are into it are really into it and the people who aren't don't see what the fuss is about. I am one of the latter, my wife is one of the former.

[Tennessee Nana]

Iceland ??? Vikings !!!

For me whenever I come across the name Smith, I leave that line alone...

Smith, Jones, any of those common names make it near immpossible to keep tracking...

I have more success with Dutch names and their variations..

[restornu]

From BYU

Search for Names & Records <<

The Internet has provided a wealth of tools for genealogists, including the ability to search large online databases to assist you in researching your ancestors. The Ancestors Web Site can help you identify many good sites for doing online searches; please visit our Links Page for further information.

In addition, this page features links to selected online databases.

Databases available include: Vietnam War Memorial, “Roots” Cellar, Internet Family File, Surname Search, Social Security Death Benefits and many others. You will also have the ability to add your own information to many of these databases.

http://www.byub.org/ancestors/ancestralsearch/