Glory be! An Irish town claims Obama as a son
@whiteheather39 (24403)
United States
May 19, 2007 6:06pm CST
I thought this article interesting. Do you ever wonder if you became famous where could they trace you back to?
Recent genealogical discoveries in Moneygall, Ireland, have found ties to Sen. Barrack Obama.
MONEYGALL, IRELAND - Here they call him O'Bama.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Democratic candidate for president, is the talk of this village because recently unearthed records indicate that he is a son of Moneygall.
Stephen Neill, a local Anglican rector, said church documents he has found, along with census, immigration and other records tracked down by U.S. genealogists, appear to show that Obama's great-great-great-grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, was reared in Moneygall, then left for America in 1850, when he was 19.
Megan Smolenyak, chief family historian for Ancestry.com, an online repository of family history records, said that although no single "smoking gun" document was found, there are about 20 different records that when pieced together make her "absolutely certain" of Obama's Moneygall roots.
Kearney sailed to New York aboard the S.S. Marmion at a time when legions of Irish were leaving their famine-stricken island. The shoemaker's son made a life in America, and his family line eventually produced Ann Durham, who was born in Kansas, according to Ancestry.com. The website has posted some of Obama's records online.
Full Story
http://www.startribune.com/587/story/1193498.html
1 person likes this
4 responses
@GardenGerty (160483)
• United States
20 May 07
Well, anything is possible, and we have always hosted lots of immigrants here in the states. How do the people , other than historians feel about this in Moneygall? Will this be enough to claim him the "Irish Vote" in the election?
2 people like this
@jennybianca (12912)
• Australia
20 May 07
Well, if one goes back far enough, there are all sorts of distant ancestors to be found, as I discovered.
Obama obviously has other races in him too.
My Irish descendants came out at the same time as Obama. They left because of the potato famine also. They came from the county of Clare, from the village of Currum & were farmers. They were on the very first ship from county Clare. They were not poor as many other Irish potato famine victims were. My G-G-Grandfather paid for his families emigration, & his brother, sister-in-law, & their three kids too.
In Australia, they bought a farm & paid outright for it. His brother & family did not fair so well. The three kids ended up in a reform school for stealing.
If Obana looks into his Irish history, he find it very interesting.
@sumofalltears (3988)
• United States
20 May 07
Well that's nice, I wonder how Obama will feel about it. Nice to know that in four generations they got to be powerful politicians. But to me it is not so much where you came from but in who you are. Sometimes people make judgements using the wrong criteria, especially in politics when the mud slinging starts.
