Marian Shields Robinson Marian Shields Robinson Marian Lois Robinson (née Shields; born July 30, 1937) is the mother of Michelle Obama, former First Lady of the United States, and mother-in-law of Barack Obama, former President. Marian Shields was born in Chicago in 1937, the fourth of seven children—five girls, followed by two boys—born to Purnell Nathaniel Shields, a house painter, and his wife Rebecca Jumper, a licensed practical nurse. Two of her sisters and her brother Steve still live in Chicago on the South Side, as she did. Both parents had multi-racial ancestry, but slavery times were not discussed much when she was
Maiden (guillotine) Gibbet: "the Maiden, which he himself had caused make after the patterne which he had seen in Halifax in Yorkshire". Although there was no other support for this claim, later writers repeated the legend. A 1789 history of Halifax embellished it with the story that Morton "carried a model of it to his own country, where it remained so long unused, that it acquired the name of the Maiden." From 1564 to 1710 more than 150 people were executed on the Maiden, after which it was withdrawn from use. Notable victims included Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, in 1661,