Close Call With Slavery... I think

So I belong to a website called Wikitree, which is essentially one giant family tree for everyone. One of the cool features is that it can connect you with just about anyone and give you the path for that connection. Every week, it sends out a themed email of people connected to you and how many degrees or generational steps apart that connection is. Most of the time the connections average in the low 20 degrees of separation but this past week, it told me I was only 19 degrees from being related to Michelle Robinson Obama in the notorious twitter users connection.

My first thought was oh no. Some ancestor of mine was a slave owner and had a dalliance with a slave. I have only traced a couple families to the slave holding south but have yet to see any evidence of slave holding, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was able to go back far enough, that some would. But I clicked on her name to see how we were connected and immediately was reassured that wasn't the case, at least yet.

I am actually related to Michelle Obama through her husband Barack, something I find pretty cool, especially since we are connected only by 18 degrees, one of the least amount of degrees I have seen in recent memory. Going up the tree, I am related through his mother Ann Dunham who is white and born in Kansas. Going further up Barack's tree, through his mother's father Stanley Dunham, his father Ralph Dunham, so on and so forth, I eventually get to Mary Gordy who is Barack's 8th great grandmother. She is the sister of my 5th great grandfather, Moses Gordy. So essentially, there is a direct line from the parents of Sarah and Moses Gordy all the way to Barack Obama and one to me.

But one thing bothers me. Barack's 8th great grandmother is sister to my 5th great grandfather. Why the disparity in generations? I would expect Barack being older than I am to have less generations to the common ancestor that I do. I suppose Barack's line could descend from elder siblings and mine from younger siblings. Back before birth control, many women were giving birth to children over the course of 25 years so her older children could already have kids of their own before she had her youngest child. Indeed, tracing that line, my 2nd great grandmother Gordy was one of the youngest in a string of children. Beyond that I haven't researched beyond my direct ancestor so can't say for certain.

Another explanation is that there simply can be an error.  Many people fall prey to wishful thinking and though to add to the single family tree on Wikipedia, you are supposed to add proof along with names, there are lots of entries when you get back far enough with no proof added. So perhaps the only way I will ever know for sure is to call up Henry Louis Gates Jr. and have him do a DNA comparison study between me and Barack Obama and see if we share some DNA. Since I don't tweet, I'm guessing we don't share that gene.