Hebridean President
American President Barack Oama has Hebridean links it has been discovered.
Way back in the late 1800s, one of Barack Obama's female relatives married the son of a Lewis emigrant thus binding the USA’s 44th president with the Western Isles.
The connection was revealed by a Canadian tracing her roots through islands' genealogists Bill and Chrissie Lawson, based in Northton, Harris.
Mary Forsythe from British Columbia is descended from a group of crofters who left Lewis to sail to the new World in 1851. Both her great grandparents hailed from Ness and Barvas in the north of Lewis.
They sailed for Lower Canada, now called Quebec, when, by the end of the century Gaelic-speaking Hebridean were dominant amongst many areas of the province and made up about a third of the Eastern Townships.
Mary Forsythe's great grandparents, understood to be John Morrison and Isabella Murray, got married. The Gaelic-speaking Presbyterians migrated to Minnesota and had a son William - believed to be Mary’s grandfather - who wed a direct relation of Barack Obama.
Although the Scottish connection is through marriage the new president is likely to have distant cousins in Lewis, something like 11th cousins.