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John Punch ( 1630s, living 1640) was an enslaved African who lived in the
colony of Virginia The Colony of Virginia, chartered in 1606 and settled in 1607, was the first enduring English colony in North America, following failed attempts at settlement on Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey GilbertGilbert (Saunders Family), Sir Humphrey" (histor ...
. Thought to have been an
indentured servant Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, ...
, Punch attempted to escape to
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to it ...
and was sentenced in July 1640 by the
Virginia Governor's Council The Governor's Council (also known as the "Council of State" or simply "the Council") was the upper house of the colonial legislature (the House of Burgesses was the other house) in the Colony of Virginia from 1607 until the American Revolution i ...
to serve as a slave for the remainder of his life. Two European men who ran away with him received a lighter sentence of extended indentured servitude. For this reason, some historians consider John Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies," and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake." Some historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony, and a key milestone in the development of the institution of
slavery in the United States The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slave ...
. In July 2012,
Ancestry.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...
published a paper suggesting that John Punch was a twelfth-generation grandfather of President
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
on his mother's side, on the basis of historic and genealogical research and
Y-DNA The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes (allosomes) in therian mammals, including humans, and many other animals. The other is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or abs ...
analysis."Ancestry.com Discovers Ph Suggests"
, ''
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''. July 30, 2012.
Stolberg, Sheryl Ga
"Obama Has Ties to Slavery Not by His Father but His Mother, Research-in-obamas-family-tree/ "Surprising link found in Obama's family tree"
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. July 30, 2012.
Punch's descendants were known by the Bunch or Bunche surname. Punch is also believed to be one of the paternal ancestors of the 20th-century American diplomat
Ralph Bunche Ralph Johnson Bunche (; August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize f ...
, the first
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslav ...
to win the
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology ...
.Paul Heinegg, "Bunch Family"
''Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware'', 1995-2000. Note: Heinegg believes that Bunche was descended from Bunch ancestors established as free blacks in Virginia before the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
. There were men of the Bunch surname in South Carolina by the end of the 18th century. Quote: "Others f Bunch Familyin South Carolina i. Lovet, head of a South Orangeburg District household of 8 "other free" in 1790 C:99 He lived for a while in
Robeson County, North Carolina Robeson County is a county in the southern part of the U.S. state of North Carolina and is its largest county by land area. Its county seat is and largest city is Lumberton. The county was formed in 1787 from part of Bladen County and named in ...
, since "Lovec Bunches old field" was mentioned in the March 1, 1811, will of John Hammons B 1:125 ii. Gib., a taxable "free negro" in the District between Broad and Catawba River, South Carolina, in 1784 outh Carolina Tax List 1783-1800, frame 37 iii. Paul2, head of a Union District, South Carolina household of 6 "other free" in 1800 C:241 iv. Henry4, head of a Newberry District, South Carolina household of 2 "other free" in 1800 C:66 v. Ralph J.,
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology ...
winner in 1950, probably descended from the South Carolina branch of the family, but this has not been proved. He was born in
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
,
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
, on August 7, 1904, son of Fred and Olive Bunche. The 1900 and 1910 census for Detroit lists several members of the Bunch family who were born in South Carolina, but Fred Bunch was not among them."


Context

Africans were first brought to
Jamestown, Virginia The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the James (Powhatan) River about southwest of the center of modern Williamsburg. It was ...
, in 1619. However, their status as slaves or indentured servants remains unclear. Philip S. Foner pointed out the differing perceptions held by historians, saying:
Some historians believe that slavery may have existed from the very first arrival of the Negro in 1619, but others are of the opinion that the institution did not develop until the 1660s and that the status of the Negro until then was that of an indentured servant. Still others believe that the evidence is too sketchy to permit any definite conclusion either way.
Historian Alden T. Vaughan also recognizes differing opinions over when the institution of slavery started, but he says that most scholars agree that both free black people and enslaved black people were found in the Virginia colony by 1640. He notes, "On the first point--the status of blacks before the passage of the slave laws--the issue is not whether some were free or some were slave. Almost everyone acknowledges the existence of both categories by the 1640s, if not from the beginning."


Life

John Punch was a servant of Virginia planter Hugh Gwyn, a wealthy landowner, justice, and member of the
House of Burgesses The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. With the creation of the House of Burgesses in 1642, the General Assembly, which had been established ...
, representing Charles River County (which became York County in 1642). In 1640, Punch ran away to
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to it ...
accompanied by two of Gwyn's European indentured servants. All three were caught and returned to Virginia. On July 9, the
Virginia Governor's Council The Governor's Council (also known as the "Council of State" or simply "the Council") was the upper house of the colonial legislature (the House of Burgesses was the other house) in the Colony of Virginia from 1607 until the American Revolution i ...
, which served as the colony's highest court, sentenced both Europeans to have their terms of indenture extended by another four years each. However, they sentenced Punch to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." In addition, the council sentenced the three men to thirty lashes each.


Sentenced to life

The General Court of The Governor's Council provided this verdict on July 9, 1640. Punctuation and spelling modernized.
Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath by order from this Board brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away from the said Gwyn, the court doth therefore order that the said three servants shall receive the punishment of whipping and have thirty stripes apiece. One called Victor, a Dutchman, the other a Scotchman called James Gregory, shall first serve out their times with their master according to their Indentures, and one whole year apiece after the time of their service is expired by their said indentures in recompense of his loss sustained by their absence, and after that service to their said master is expired, to serve the colony for three whole years apiece. And that the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere.
Three sources are cited in a 2012 article written by Jeffrey B. Perry, in which he quotes Ancestry.com, stating "'only one surviving
ritten Ritten (; it, Renon ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in South Tyrol in northern Italy. Territory The community is named after the high plateau, elevation , the Ritten or the Renon, on which most of the villages are located. The plateau forms ...
account ... certainly pertains to John Punch's life ... ' a paragraph from the ''Journal of the Executive Council of Colonial Virginia'', dated July 9, 1640:" John H. Russell defined slavery in his book ''The Free Negro In Virginia, 1619–1865'':
The difference between a servant and a slave is elementary and fundamental. The loss of liberty to the servant was temporary; the bondage of the slave was perpetual. It is the distinction made by Beverly in 1705 when he wrote, "They are call'd Slaves in respect of the time of their Servitude, because it is for Life." Wherever, according to the customs and laws of the colony, negroes were regarded and held as servants without a future right to freedom, there we should find the beginning of slavery in that colony.
Historians have noted that John Punch ceased to be an indentured servant and was condemned to
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, as he was sentenced to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life." Edgar Toppin states that "Punch, in effect, became a slave under this ruling."
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Aloysius Leon Higginbotham Jr. (February 25, 1928 – December 14, 1998) was an American civil rights advocate, historian, presidential adviser, and federal court judge. From 1990 to 1991, he served as chief judge of the United States Court of ...
said, "Thus, although he committed the same crime as the Dutchman and the Scotsman, John Punch, a black man, was sentenced to lifetime slavery."
Winthrop Jordan Winthrop Donaldson Jordan (November 11, 1931 – February 23, 2007) was an American historian and professor who specialized in the history of slavery in the United States and racism against Black Americans. His 1968 work ''White Over Black: ...
also described this court ruling as "the first definite indication of outright enslavement appears in Virginia ... the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or else where."
Theodore W. Allen Theodore William Allen (August 23, 1919 – January 19, 2005) was an American independent scholar, writer, and activist, best known for his pioneering writings since the 1960s on white skin privilege and the origin of white identity. His major ...
notes that the court's "being a negro" justification made no explicit reference to precedent in English or Virginia common law, and suggests that the court members may have been aware of common law that held a Christian could not enslave a Christian (with Punch being presumed to be a non-Christian, unlike his accomplices), wary of the diplomatic friction that would come of enslaving Christian Europeans, and possibly hopeful of replicating the lifetime indentures of African slaves held in the Caribbean and South American colonies.


Significance

In his ''A Biographical History of Blacks in America since 1528'' (1971), Toppin explains the importance of Punch's case in the legal history of Virginia:
Thus, the black man, John Punch, became a slave unlike the two white indentured servants who merely had to serve a longer term. This was the first known case in Virginia involving slavery. It was significant because it was documented.Edgar A. Toppin, ''A Biographical History of Blacks in America Since 1528,'' New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1971. , p. 37
The
National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...
, in a history of Jamestown, notes that while it was a "customary practice to hold some Negroes in a form of life service," Punch was the "first documented slave for life." Other historians have also emphasized the importance of this court decision as being one to establish a legal acceptance for slavery. John Donoghue said, "This can be interpreted as the first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake." Historians consider this difference in penalties to mark the case as one of the first to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants."Slavery and Indentured Servants"
Law Library of Congress The Law Library of Congress is the law library of the United States Congress. The Law Library of Congress holds the single most comprehensive and authoritative collection of domestic, foreign, and international legal materials in the world. Est ...
Tom Costa in his article, "Runaway Slaves and Servants in Colonial Virginia" says, "Scholars have argued that this decision represents the first legal distinction between Europeans and Africans to be made by Virginia courts."


Indentured status

One historian has speculated that Punch may never have been an indentured servant. In his 1913 study of free negroes in Virginia, John Henderson Russell points out that the court decision was ambiguous. If Punch was not a servant with future prospects of freedom, his sentencing was less harsh than his white accomplices. If Punch was a servant, then his punishment was much more severe than that of his white accomplices. But Russell states that the "most reasonable explanation" was that the Dutchman and the Scot, being white, were given only four additional years on top of their remaining terms of indenture, while Punch, "being a negro, was reduced from his former condition of servitude for a limited time to a condition of slavery for life."John Henderson Russell. ''The Free Negro In Virginia, 1619-1865''
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1913, pp. 29-30, scanned text online
Russell noted that the court did not refer to an indentured contract related to Punch, but notes that he was a "servant," and it was most reasonable that he was a limited-term servant (of some sort) before he was sentenced to "slavery for life". In the same 2012 article referenced above, Perry says that the court ruling specifically refers to the indentured contracts of Victor and James Gregory and extends them, while the court decision refers to John Punch only as a servant. Perry adds,
"What is likely is that" Punch "was previously subjected to limited-term chattel bond-servitude" and says "that in Virginia chattelization was imposed on free laborers, tenants, and bond-servants increasingly after 1622, that it was imposed on both European and African descended laborers, that it was a qualitative break from common law labor laws, and that the chattelization of
plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
labor constituted an essential precondition of the emergence of the subsequent lifetime chattel bond-servitude imposed on African American laborers in continental Anglo-America under the system of racial slavery and racial oppression."


Descendants

Drawing on a combination of historical documents and autosomal DNA analysis,
Ancestry.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...
stated in July 2012 that it is a strong likelihood that 44th
United States President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
is an eleventh-great-grandson of Punch through his mother Stanley Ann Dunham. Genealogical research indicates that some time in the 1630s, Punch married a white woman, likely also an indentured servant. By 1637 he had fathered a son called John Bunch (labelled by genealogists as "John Bunch I"). While researchers cannot definitively prove that Punch was the father of Bunch, he is the only known African man of that time and place who is a possible progenitor. Punch and his wife are known as the first black and white couple in the colonies who left traceable descendants. It remains possible that the father of Bunch was another African, of whom there is no record, but the similarity of the names would still need to be explained. Due to some challenges by racially mixed children of Englishmen to being enslaved, in 1662 the Virginia colony incorporated the principle of ''
partus sequitur ventrem ''Partus sequitur ventrem'' (L. "That which is born follows the womb"; also ''partus'') was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born the ...
'' into slave law. This law held that children in the colonies were born into the status of their mothers; therefore, children of slave mothers were born into slavery, regardless of whether their fathers were free and European. In this way, slavery was made a racial caste associated with people of African ancestry. The law overturned the English common law applicable to the children of two English subjects in England, in which the father's social status determined that of the child.Taunya Lovell Banks, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit – Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia"
41 ''Akron Law Review'' 799 (2008), Digital Commons Law, University of Maryland Law School, accessed April 21, 2009
At the same time, this law meant that racially mixed children of white women were born into their mother's free status. Paul Heinegg, in his ''Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware'' found that most families of free black people in the 1790–1810 U.S. censuses could be traced to children of white women and black men, whether free, indentured servant, or slave, in colonial Virginia. Their children were born free and the families were established as free before the
Revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
. Punch's male descendants probably became known by the surname Bunch, a very rare name among colonial families. Before 1640, there were fewer than 100 African men in Virginia, and John Punch was the only one with a surname similar to Bunch.Paul C. Reed, Natalie D. Cottrill, Joseph B. Shumway, and Anastasia Harman, "Descent of the Bunch Family in Virginia and the Carolinas"
July 15, 2012, Ancestry.com, accessed November 14, 2012
The Bunch descendants were free black people who became successful land-owners in Virginia. Some lines eventually assimilated as white, after generations of marrying white. In September 1705 a man referred to by researchers as John Bunch III petitioned the General Court of Virginia for permission to publish banns for his marriage to Sarah Slayden, a white woman, but their minister had refused to publish the banns. (There had been a ban on marriages between Negroes and whites, but Bunch posed a challenge, as he was apparently the son of a white woman, with only a degree of African ancestry. The petition argued that ''
mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese is ...
'' meant a person of half Negro and half white ancestry.) This John Bunch appealed the denial to the General Court of Virginia. The Court's decision is unknown, but the following month the government of Virginia responded by issuing a statute expanding the use of the term ''mulatto''. It held that anyone who was a child, grandchild or great-grandchild of an African or Native American was a mulatto. In the early nineteenth century, racially mixed people of less than one-eighth African or Native American ancestry (equivalent to one great-grandparent) were considered legally white. Many racially mixed people lived as white in frontier areas, where they were treated in accordance with their community and fulfillment of citizen obligations. This was a looser definition than that established in 1924, when Virginia adopted the "
one-drop rule The one-drop rule is a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Frontlin" ...
" under its Racial Integrity Act, which defined as black anyone with any known black ancestry, no matter how limited. Records do not show a marriage for John Bunch III, but the mother of one of his children was later noted as being named Rebecca. He had moved to Louisa County as part of the colonial westward migration to the frontiers of Virginia. Through continued intermarriage with white families in Virginia, the line of Obama's maternal Bunch ancestors probably were identified as white as early as 1720. Members of this line eventually migrated into
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to t ...
and ultimately to
Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the w ...
, where descendants included Obama's maternal grandmother and his mother Stanley Ann Dunham. Another line of the Bunch family migrated to North Carolina, where they were classified in some records as
mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese is ...
. They intermarried with people of a variety of ethnic origins, including European. The Bunch (sometimes spelled Bunche) family was established as free before the American Revolution. The Bunch surname lines also became associated with the core racially mixed families later known as
Melungeon Melungeons ( ) are an ethnicity from the Southeastern United States who descend from Europeans, Native American, and sub-Saharan Africans brought to America as indentured servants and later as slaves. Historically, the Melungeons were associated ...
in Tennessee. Bunch family members also lived in South Carolina by the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Several members of the Bunch family from South Carolina were living in
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
,
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
, by the 1900 and 1910 censuses, as a result of moving in the Great Migration. Researcher Paul Heinegg, known for his genealogy work on free African Americans of the colonial and early federal periods,"Descent of the Bunch Family in Virginia and the Carolinas"
p. 6. Quote: "Heinegg has done an extraordinary job constructing the genealogies of free blacks and should be one of the first sources people check for African-American ancestry in the colonial period."
believes that Fred Bunche was among those Bunch descendants from South Carolina, as people often migrated in related groups. His son
Ralph Bunche Ralph Johnson Bunche (; August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize f ...
, born in Detroit, earned a doctorate in political science and taught at the university level. He helped plan the United Nations, mediated in Israel, and later served as U.S. Minister to the United Nations, eventually being awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology ...
. Y-DNA testing of direct male descendants of the Bunch family lines has revealed a common ancestry going back to a single male ancestor of African ethnicity. Genealogists believe this male ancestor to be John Punch the African. He was probably born in present-day Cameroon in West Africa, where his particular type of DNA is most common.


See also

*
Family of Barack Obama The family of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, is a prominent American family active in law, education, activism and politics. Obama's immediate family circle was the first family of the United States from 2009 to 2017, a ...
*
John Casor John Casor (surname also recorded as Cazara and Corsala), a servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony, in 1655 became the first person of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be declared as a slave for life as a result of a c ...
*
List of slaves Slavery is a social-economic system under which people are enslaved: deprived of personal freedom and forced to perform labor or services without compensation. These people are referred to as slaves, or as enslaved people. The following is a ...


References


Further reading

* Allen, Theodore W., ''The Invention of the White Race'' (2 volumes), ''The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, vol.2'' * Finkelman, Paul. ''Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases,'' Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1985/reprint 1998 (KF4545.S5 A123 1985).


External links


"The Bunch y-DNA Project"
hosted by World Families.net
"President Obama descends from the first African enslaved for life in America"
press release, Ancestry.com, July 2012

''SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA'', 2004, ''American Experience'',
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...
-WNET
Henry Robert Burke, "Slavery in Virginia"
n.d., ''Links to the Past'', personal website, some articles published in ''Community Leader (Marietta, Ohio)'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Punch, John Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown African-American families African-American genealogy African-American history of North Carolina American people of Cameroonian descent 17th-century American slaves History of slavery in Virginia Obama family United States slavery case law People from York County, Virginia Virginia colonial people