Obama's Grandparents, Mother Lived In Oklahoma

The Associated Press

PONCA CITY, OK -- The mother and grandparents of President Barack Obama once lived in the northern Oklahoma town of Ponca City about six decades ago, research by the Ponca City News
has confirmed.

Madelyn and Stanley Dunham married in 1940, a few weeks before she graduated from high school. Their daughter Stanley Ann -- Obama's mother -- was born in 1942. The family lived in Ponca City from about 1948 to 1951.

Ponca City school records indicate that Stanley Ann attended first and second grade at Jefferson Elementary School and third grade at Roosevelt Elementary School in the Kay County city. The
family lived in two residences during their time in Ponca City.

Stanley Dunham moved his family to Ponca City from Wichita, Kan., after he took a job as a salesman at the Jay Paris Furniture Store. Paris' daughter, Patricia Paris Moore, said she recalled Dunham as a joker during his time working at the store.

Ponca City News articles from 1949 mention Dunham being a salesman at the store.

The Dunham family moved from Ponca City to Vernon, Texas, according to school records. The family later lived in California, Washington -- where Stanley Ann went to high school -- and Hawaii.

Obama was born in August 1961, the son of Stanley Ann and a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama. The pair married but later divorced.

The future president was raised for a time by his grandparents in Hawaii while their daughter and her second husband lived overseas.

Stanley Dunham died in 1992 and Obama's mother died in November 1995. Madelyn Dunham died in Hawaii at age 86 on Nov. 3, the day before he was elected president.