John Punch (slave)

John Punch
Bornc. 1605
now Cameroon
Diedc. 1650 (aged c. 45)
York County, Virginia, England
Known forFirst official slave in the Thirteen Colonies[1]

John Punch (c. 1605 – c. 1650) was a Central African resident of the colony of Virginia who became its first legally enslaved person in British colonial America.[2][3]

Thought to have been an indentured servant, Punch attempted to escape to Maryland and was sentenced in July 1640 by the Virginia Governor's Council 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 Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies,"[4] and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake."[2] Some historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony,[5] and a key milestone in the development of the institution of slavery in the United States.[6]

In July 2012, Ancestry.com published a paper suggesting that John Punch was a twelfth-generation great grandfather of U.S. President Barack Obama on his mother's side, based on historical and genealogical research and Y-DNA analysis.[7][8][9] 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, the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.[10]

  1. ^ Heywood & Thornton (2012). "Obama Slave-Ancestry Report Misses the Mark". Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
  2. ^ a b John Donoghue (2010). "'Out of the Land of Bondage': The English Revolution and the Atlantic Origins of Abolition". The American Historical Review. 115 (4). Archived from the original on September 1, 2016.
  3. ^ Paul Finkelman (1985). Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases. Library of Congress. ISBN 9781886363489.
  4. ^ Coates (2003). "Law and the Cultural Production of Race and Racialized Systems of Oppression" (PDF). American Behavioral Scientist. 47 (3): 329–351. doi:10.1177/0002764203256190. S2CID 146357699.
  5. ^ Tom Costa (2011). "Runaway Slaves and Servants in Colonial Virginia". Encyclopedia Virginia.
  6. ^ Paul Finkelman (1985). Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases (Library of Congress). p. 3
  7. ^ "Ancestry.com Discovers Ph Suggests" Archived April 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times. July 30, 2012.
  8. ^ Plante, Bill Obama Related to First Documented Slave in America", Ancestry.com. July 30, 2012.
  9. ^ Stolberg, Sheryl Gay "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", CBS News. July 30, 2012.
  10. ^ 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. There were men of the Bunch surname in South Carolina by the end of the 18th century. Quote: "Others [of Bunch Family] in South Carolina i. Lovet, head of a South Orangeburg District household of 8 "other free" in 1790 [SC:99]. He lived for a while in Robeson County, North Carolina, since "Lovec Bunches old field" was mentioned in the March 1, 1811, will of John Hammons [WB 1:125]. ii. Gib., a taxable "free negro" in the District between Broad and Catawba River, South Carolina, in 1784 [South Carolina Tax List 1783-1800, frame 37]. iii. Paul2, head of a Union District, South Carolina household of 6 "other free" in 1800 [SC:241]. iv. Henry4, head of a Newberry District, South Carolina household of 2 "other free" in 1800 [SC:66]. v. Ralph J., Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1950, probably descended from the South Carolina branch of the family, but this has not been proved. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, on August 7, 1904, the 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."