Home
News
In Focus
Business
Metro
Nation
World
Sports
Feature
Opinion
View more »Opinion Columns
Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
Restaurants get off to a quick start thanks to game-changing policies
High service charges on event ticket refunds call for further regulation
Sunday
- Subscribe
Related News
Obama comes from German roots, says Website
Source: Agencies |
June 5, 2009, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IT may be hard to imagine United States President Barack Obama in traditional German lederhosen, but researchers in the US say they have located documents that prove the president has German roots dating to the 1700s.
According to parish records uncovered by experts at the genealogy Website Ancestry.com, Obama's sixth great-grandfather Johann Conrad Woelflin was born January 29, 1729, in Besigheim, a small town north of Stuttgart on the Enz river in Germany.
Woelflin sailed aboard a ship called "Patience" in 1750 to America, changing his last name to "Wolfley" upon arrival and eventually settling in Middletown, Pennsylvania, according to head genealogist Anastasia Tyler.
In Middletown, he married Anna Catherine Schockey in 1756 and had at least six children, including Ludwig Lewis Wolfley - Obama's fifth great grandfather - who was born in 1766, Tyler said.
The investigation was started by the Website, which determined in 2007 that Obama also had Irish ancestry. Researchers decided a few weeks ago it would be fun to try and prove or disprove rumored German ancestry ahead of the president's visit to Dresden today, Tyler said.
"We'd proved the Irish, so we just wanted to see if there was any truth to the rumors of German heritage," she told reporters.
"People supposed a few different lines that went to Germany, and the one that seemed the most plausible was this Wolfley line."
Tracing the ancestry of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, the investigative team linked Obama back to Wolfley relatively quickly.
But it wasn't until last Friday when a researcher was poring over microfilmed documents at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, that they got the breakthrough documenting Wolfley's German ties.
According to parish records uncovered by experts at the genealogy Website Ancestry.com, Obama's sixth great-grandfather Johann Conrad Woelflin was born January 29, 1729, in Besigheim, a small town north of Stuttgart on the Enz river in Germany.
Woelflin sailed aboard a ship called "Patience" in 1750 to America, changing his last name to "Wolfley" upon arrival and eventually settling in Middletown, Pennsylvania, according to head genealogist Anastasia Tyler.
In Middletown, he married Anna Catherine Schockey in 1756 and had at least six children, including Ludwig Lewis Wolfley - Obama's fifth great grandfather - who was born in 1766, Tyler said.
The investigation was started by the Website, which determined in 2007 that Obama also had Irish ancestry. Researchers decided a few weeks ago it would be fun to try and prove or disprove rumored German ancestry ahead of the president's visit to Dresden today, Tyler said.
"We'd proved the Irish, so we just wanted to see if there was any truth to the rumors of German heritage," she told reporters.
"People supposed a few different lines that went to Germany, and the one that seemed the most plausible was this Wolfley line."
Tracing the ancestry of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, the investigative team linked Obama back to Wolfley relatively quickly.
But it wasn't until last Friday when a researcher was poring over microfilmed documents at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, that they got the breakthrough documenting Wolfley's German ties.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
