Ancestry.com has discovered that John Punch, the first African enslaved for life in America, was the 11th great-grandfather of President Obama.

CNNnotes researchers “found the new connection to the president’s African roots through an unlikely link, that of Obama’s Caucasian mother. President Obama’s African American roots had previously been tied to his father’s Kenyan birth. But as genealogists were pouring through documents tracing Stanley Ann Dunham’s ancestors, they found a connection to the Bunch family which had recently published DNA evidence that they had roots in sub-Saharan Africa.”