American president is cousin to Morrisons and Murrays 13/11/08
America's president-in-waiting has Hebridean links it has been discovered.
The Morrisons and the Murrays of Ness and Lower Shader on Lewis could be long lost cousins of Barack Obama.
Way back in the late 1800s one of Barack Obama's female relatives married the son of a Lewis emigrant thus binding the president-elect with the Western Isles.
The island connection is made through Mary Forsythe from British Columbia who is descended from crofters who left Lewis to sail to the new World in 1851.
The group of Presbyterians from Ness and Barvas in the north of Lewis originally headed for Lower Canada now called Quebec.
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.
Some of the Lewis people like Mary Forsythe's great grandparents, understood to be John Morrison and Isabella Murray, married.
The couple, originally from South Dell and Lower Shader married. They migrated to Minnesota and had a son William thought to be Mary’s grandfather, who wed a relation of Barack Obama.
Although the Scottish connection is through marriage the new president is likely to have a branch of his family in Lewis.
Mary Forsythe confimed the link was through the Morrisons.
She believed: “I am an 11th cousin, once removed. The president elect is in the same generation as my children.”
