Dwight D. Eisenhower had black ancestry via his maternal side, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower; it was used politically against him by his opponents.

Ida Link’s mother — Elizabeth Link (Eisenhower’s maternal grandmother) has no known family tree:

Why are her parents listed as “unknown”?

She’s a genealogical dead end. But no one is a genealogical dead end unless someone wants them to be.

She was born in Mount Sidney, Virginia,[1] the only daughter of Elizabeth Ida Juda Link and Simon P. Stover.

Here’s the problem: In Mount Sidney to this day there are both black families and white families with the surname “Link”.. Many years ago, a black researcher discovered that Ida’s mother was from the black Links a fact washed away in time by two things:

1. Her mother died when she was five years old.

2. She went to live with a white family after.

3. She moved to Kansas while in her teens.

4. She married a white man.