During last year’s St.Patrick’s Day parade in Philadelphia, Barack Obama supporters were toting homemade signs spelling their candidate’s name O’Bama. Funny, but hinting at the truth: Obama is a Kenyan name, of course, but the new President-elect can trace some of his roots to a small town in County Offaly that his great-great-great grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, left in 1849 to make his way in America.
Obama not only knows about his Irish ancestors, he told an ITV reporter during the campaign that he was looking forward to going to Moneygall for a pint. According to this morning’s Irish Times, Moneygall is up for it too. Read their story here.
Even better, sing a song of our new president’s roots with a Moneygall group called Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys. Fair warning: It’s hard to get it out of your head. Tooralay, tooralama, there’s no one as Irish as Barack Obama? Listen to it here.
Of course, Joe the Vice President is of Irish descent. His mother, whom he quoted liberally while campaigning (every time I heard him say,“As my mother would say, “God bless him,” I thought of every elderly relative in my family) was a Finnegan from County Mayo. The Bidens came from Liverpool, though the new vice president-elect once told Niall Dowd of the Irish Voice that his father swore it was an Irish name. Given Senator Biden’s gift for gab, I tend to believe that. You can read that long-ago interview with Dowd here.
In his autobiography, Senator John McCain traced his roots to the highlands of Scotland, but Ulster Heritage Magazine says that the McCains left those highlands long ago for County Antrim, where they lived until the early 1700s. You can read about it here.
There’s a Paddy in Sarah Palin’s family tree as well. Her mother’s maiden name is Sheeran (or Sheiran) and the governor’s great-great-great-grandfather, Michael Sheiran, was born near the Longford-Roscommon border in Knockhall, Ballykilcline in the parish of Kilglass, Strokestown, in 1823 and emigrated to America in 1844. Read about Palin’s Irish roots here.
Interested in tracing your own Irish roots? Start here.
