John Punch (mid 1600s)--an African man--served as an indentured servant to a Virginia planter. Researchers have concluded that he likely fathered a child with a white woman. That child, John Bunch, was born in 1637. In 1640, Punch ran away with two other (white) indentured servants. All three were caught in Maryland. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years to their servitude; Punch was sentenced to a lifetime.
Today scholars have noted that Punch essentially became the first documented slave; the sentence is thought to be the first legal formalization of distinguishing servitude between whites and blacks.
In 2012, Ancestry.com announced that through historical documents and Y-DNA analysis, it is highly likely that President Barack Obama is related to Punch through his mother Stanley Ann Dunham. The Bunch descendants (as the family became known) became landowners as free people of color. Another family line continued to intermarry and eventually assimilated into the white population.--Heidi Durrow
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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience. Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog! Thanks for reading. And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. Copyright 2014.
