It's been said that if you go back far enough in your genealogy, everyone on the planet is related. Of course, that's true, but 99.99% of the time you have to go back further than records allow. For the Claybourn family and President-elect Barack Obama, that is not a concern. We have been able to determine that, through marriage, all Claybourns are related to the 44th President of the United States.

James Verner Marvin Claybourn (known simply as "Vern") had a daughter named Mary Adelais. She married a Herbert Edward Allred. Herbert is a direct descendant John Allred, who was born in 1772 in Richmond County, North Carolina and died in 1850 in Newton County, Arkansas. This John Allred is also a direct ancestor (on his maternal grandmother's side) of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.