Michelle Obama’s Slave Ancestry
The first lady’s family tree traces connections to slaves and a white forebear.

It is moving, it is sobering, it is a reach back into history. The tales about the family tree of first lady Michelle Obama and an American map that traces her back to the slaves and slave owners that were in her past. This woman who made it all the way to the White House. ABC's Yunji de Nies has more on the first of this journey.

The rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady-Michelle Obama.

Here is a journey that began more than a century ago with the death of a slave holder who left all of his property to relatives including a six-year-old girl named Malvinia valued at 475 dollars. She worked on a farm that grew wheat, corn and cotton living an unimaginable life of labour.

She was one of three slaves. There was a very small farm. It wasn't kind of the notion of a plantation that we have.

With so few slaves, Malvinia likely worked in the house and laboured in the field. As a teenager, she gave birth to a son with a white man.

The child is listed in this 1870 census as a "mulatto", the term used to describe a person of mixed race. His name was Dolphus Shields, Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather. Many families have stories like Mrs Obama did about white ancestors.

This is a good memory of him.

Shields grew up a free man and became a carpenter. Barbie Helld was his informally adopted daughter.

He was just a beautiful person, full of love.

Three generations later, Marian Shields Robinson would give birth to little Michelle. In Mrs Obama Holt sees Shields.

She seems to be a very loving person, and so was he. And they were just a good match.

A family that went from slavery in the south to the halls of the White House.

It's just an amazing journey.

An amazing uniquely American journey. For Good Morning America. Yunji de Nies. ABC News, Washington.