She runs Broadway’s Museum of Mystery so she deals with strange reports all the time but Charlette LeFevre says she is tracking down information and pictures from the time when baby Barack made his home right here on Capitol Hill Seattle.

The possible discovery stems from this exchange on the Hill’s community council web site:

Ann Dunham’s apartment
Leif 13 Dec 2008, 12:54 -0-800
Hi, does anyone happen to know where the apartment is/was where B. Obama’s mother lived on Capitol Hill? I’m really interested in Seattle history and have been striking out on the exact address. Apparently, before the C. Hill apt. she lived at a “Laurelhurst dormitory” near UW, but I don’t know exactly where that is either, or if it still exists.

Re: Ann Dunham’s apartment
Charlette 1 Jan 2009, 22:09 -0-800
Hi Leif, Interesting inquiry. If Stanley Ann Dunham was living on Capitol Hill that means our next President Barack Obama also lived on Capitol Hill as an infant. (Interesting he is going from Capitol Hill to Capitol Hill). If the time period was from around March 1962 to at least September 1962 then Barack Obama would have been around 7 months old. There is a possiblity if Ann signed on with UW as a student that UW Housing may have records.

Re: Ann Dunham’s apartment Charlette 6 Jan 2009, 23:16 -0-800
Confirmed Barack Obama lived here on Capitol Hill. Document and photos to be posted soon.

There is no doubt baby Barack lived on the hill. It was a tumultuous time in his young mother’s life. According to this Seattle Times article, Obama’s mother, who spent her teenage years on Mercer Island, moved back to Seattle from Hawaii in 1962 to attend UW and, one can imagine, try to get her life back on track. She was separated from Barack’s father who had returned to Kenya. The Times article says she and her 1-year-old son lived in a Capitol Hill apartment but soon move back to Hawaii to live with her family. The hill apartment, it seems, wasn’t the place to put your life back together.

I’m interested to know more about this short period in Obama’s life, if for no other reason, because it will be cool to have another interesting place of history on Capitol Hill to wander by and wonder what if. What if Ann Dunham had made it work here? Could this Capitol Hill have created a president?