just found this…huh
JUL 3, 2010 - 18:33
Ried bei Kerzers, soon to be twinned with Washington?
A Swiss village has laid claim to Barack Obama’s roots – the latest European location to throw its name into the multicultural mix that is the United States president.
After three months of combing through town records, a Swiss archivist has traced Obama’s family tree to a villager from western Switzerland.
While the ancestor in question – Hans Gutknecht – was already confirmed by archivists to have lived in the French Alsace village of Bischwiller in 1720, experts suspected he might have originated from Switzerland. Now, his baptism record has been unearthed showing he was born in the village of Ried bei Kerzers.
A rustic German-speaking village near the capital Bern, Ried bei Kerzers is quintessentially Swiss. Set among wheat fields, its quiet streets are lined with huge, long-roofed farmhouses and pristine gardens.
Still largely a farming village to this day, it boasts one shop, a church and a lone petrol pump.
In the past the Gutknecht name was common in the region around Ried bei Kerzers and when speculation arose in recent years about a possible tie to Obama, a number of local Gutknechts came forward claiming the president as their own.
It was the village council that decided to end the “mystery” forever, by putting its genealogist, Hans Herren, on the case. Through a process of elimination of different Gutknecht branches he traced the line down to a family in nearby Fräschels. The family tree ends with their 12-year-old boy, Obama’s distant cousin…
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/obama-s-roots-traced-to-swiss-villager/15349746