Senator’s 3rd Great-Grandfather Born in Ireland, Immigrated to U.S. in 1850; Historical Documents on Ancestry.com Reveal Light-Hearted Side of America’s Irish Heritage
PROVO, Utah, March 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online resource for family history which recently discovered Al Sharpton’s shocking connection to Strom Thurmond, revealed today that presidential hopeful Barack Obama has Irish branches in his family tree. More than a century and a half ago, 19-year-old Falmouth Kearney, Obama’s third great-grandfather, sailed from Ireland, landing in New York harbor on March 20, 1850.Â
Settling initially in Ohio among Irish relatives [click on the image to enlarge his 1860 census enumeration], Falmouth married, had eight children, and eventually moved to Indiana. Three of Falmouth’s daughters married three brothers with the last name Dunham. Obama’s mother is descended from one of these couples — her birth name was Dunham.Â
Falmouth was among the thousands of Irish immigrating to America to escape the late 1840s potato famine in Ireland. By 1860, New York City had the largest Irish population in the world — a quarter of its residents had been born in Ireland.
“If Barack Obama and Al Sharpton’s family histories have taught us anything, it’s shown that our roots illustrate the diverse fabric of America’s history,” says Megan Smolenyak, Chief Family Historian for Ancestry.com. “Our family heritage is often a tangle of roots that defines our existence within the events that shaped this country. There’s no such thing as a boring family tree and as you discover your own history, the journey reveals the real stories of America.” Continue reading