John Punch (slave)
First official enslaved person in the Thirteen Colonies / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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John Punch (born 1605) was an African resident of the colony of Virginia who became its first slave.[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 John 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]
John Punch | |
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Born | 1605 Cameroon |
Died | |
Known for | First official slave in the Thirteen Colonies[1] |
In July 2012, Ancestry.com published a paper suggesting that John Punch was a twelfth-generation 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]