MARGARET BELLE WRIGHT

'Had to cook her fool head off'

Margaret Belle Wright McCurry didn't do anything to get written up in the history books.

But her life -- and certainly her biscuits -- probably should have been.

Barack Obama's great-great-grandmother was a Kansas farmwife more than a century ago. And, like women of the time, she lived a tough life, cleaning, cooking and raising a large family with none of the modern conveniences.

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Barack Obama's great-great grandparents, Thomas Creekmore McCurry (middle row, far right) and Margaret Belle Wright McCurry (middle row, next to Thomas), and their relatives and in-laws in Peru, Kansas. Other blood relatives of Obama's include: great-grand uncles Frank McCurry (top row, far left) and John McCurry (middle row, left).
(Courtesy of Rae Janette McCurry Marshall)

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Thomas Creekmore McCurry and his wife Margaret Belle Wright McCurry, around 1930. 
(Courtesy of Robert Lawrence Mardock and Mary Louise McCurry Mardock)

"It was very hard."

McCurry was the second wife of Thomas Creekmore McCurry, who was 19 years older than her.

"She was a very kind, sweet person," said Marshall, 77, a retired schoolteacher from El Reno, Okla. "She was a good cook. I remember Daddy talking about how every morning they had biscuits, and the family used to rave about how high the biscuits would rise and the dumplings -- how good they were."

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No one remembers much about Thomas Creekmore McCurry, although, according to family lore, he once shook hands with Abraham Lincoln.

Relatives can't provide verification or cite a source for the claim.

If it's true, it would have to have happened when McCurry was a boy. He was 15 when Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.

Some documents suggest McCurry was born in Illinois, though most put his childhood squarely in Missouri.