Don’t expect Peru to become another Camp David or Texas White House.

But you might pay attention when TV journalists start talking about Barack Obama’s Kansas roots.
They started in Peru.

When the charismatic Obama came into the political limelight four years ago at the National Democratic Convention, he probably hadn’t given a lot of thought to Kansas. After all, he had spent most of his lifetime in Hawaii, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

When he became a major contender, and finally the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, news trickled out that his mother’s family came from El Dorado — a much touted fact in recent weeks of his campaign.

That news has been localized even more as stories continue to emerge about the small town of Peru being the birthplace of his grandmother, Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham, who raised Obama from the age of 10.

Several journalists and television stations have visted Peru in recent weeks to search for Obama’s Kansas heritage. His father’s side of the family came from Kenya.

Madelyn was only three years old when her parents moved away from Peru in 1925 but the family tree was firmly planted in Chautauqua County.

Dunham’s parents, Rolla Payne and Leona McCurry, spent most of their years in Chautauqua County. Her grandparents, Thomas Creekmore McCurry and Margaret Belle Wright, were well-known in Peru and both are buried in the Peru Cemetery.

Other family members lived in nearby Hale, Longton, Sedan, Wayside and Elk City.

Vera Miller, president of the Chautauqua County Historical and Genealogical Society, said there has been a scurry of research activity in recent weeks concerning Obama’s local ancestors.

“We had already picked up on the fact that his great-great-grandparents were buried at Peru,” Miller said. “Then a few weeks ago I got a call from someone at the Peru Truck Stop who said there were some Obama relatives and they were on their way to the cemetery to find the graves.”

The family members were known for their devout membership in the Peru Methodist Church. Both of the Obama’s great-great-grandparents’ funerals were held in that church.

The next generation is more illusive. All that is known about Obama’s great-grandparents was that they moved away from Peru to live in Augusta where he worked as a bookkeeper for the Standard Oil Company.

Once they arrived in Augusta, Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Payne, attended local schools became one of the best students in the graduating class of 1940.

Despite her parents’ strict upbringing, she loved to go to Wichita to hear the “big bands.” It was on such a trip that she met Kansas-born Stanley Armour Dunham from El Dorado.

After their marriage, Madelyn Dunham broke a gender barrier by becoming a vice president in a bank in Honolulu where she and husband had moved so he could work as a furniture salesman. She also joined the Baptist Church since the entire Dunham family was deeply rooted in that denomination. She would teach those values to a young Barack Obama when he came to live with her in 1971.

Obama’s mother had gone through a marriage break-up with Barack Obama Sr. and the decision was made for young Barack to live with his grandmother whom he affectionately referred to as “Toot” (short for Tutu which means “grandmother” in the native Hawaiian language.

In April 2008, Madelyn Dunham appeared briefly in her first campaign ad for her grandson, saying that Obama had “a lot of depth, and a broadness of view.”

Today, Dunham, now 85, is an avid bridge player and still lives in the same small highrise apartment where she raised Obama. She does not take interviews because of her health. Her husband died in 1992.

While it is doubtful that Madelyn Dunham remembers anything about Peru since she was only three when she moved away, it is a name that she sees each time she looks at her birth certificate. According to other news reports, she has pictures of her grandparents who spent most of their lives in the booming oil community which then boasted a population of nearly 5,000.

Features