Report finds Irish roots among some candidates

Not that it should affect our votes, mind you, but on St. Patrick’s Day, have you ever wondered who’s Irish? Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama or John McCain? All three, maybe?

Obviously, it would take a while to research the ancestry of these major candidates for president, but we also could ask William Addams Reitwiesner, whose Web site can be found at www.wargs.com

Reitwiesner reports a good amount of English ancestry for Clinton, whose grandfather, Hugh Rodham, emigrated from County Durham. She has Welsh and Scots ancestry, too – but no Irish that he has found.

What might surprise us about Clinton’s forebears, though, is that two of her great-great-great-grandparents, Nicolas Antoine Martin and Odile Richard, were born in France.

And if we go back another generation, we find Quebec surnames Navarre, Campeau, Bourdeau, Godet, Beaudry, Pilet and Belleperche. In the 1700s, she has ancestors Jean Guyon and Mathurine Robin.

Barak Obama’s father was from Kenya in Africa, but his mother is a Dunham from Kansas, and his maternal grandmother was a Payne from Kansas.

Obama’s most recent Irish ancestor, according to Reitwiesner, is great-great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney, who was born in Ireland. His parents were Joseph and Phoebe Kearney of Moneygall, County Offaly.

If Falmouth Kearney turned out to be Obama’s only Irish ancestor, he would be a little more than 3 percent Irish.

Other British ancestors include Robert Perry and William Hoskins of Wales. The Dunham connection turns out to be a man whose original name was John Singletary of Newbury, Mass.

John McCain’s earliest migrant ancestor was his great-grandmother, Margaret Garside, who came over from England in the 1850s with parents Samuel and Mary Ellin (Dickens) Garside of Lancashire.

Great-great-great-grandfather Joseph McCain was, as one might guess, born in Scotland. One more generation back in another line, we find more Scots – the Rev. Andrew Hart and Elizabeth (Leake) of Linlithgow.

But how about Irish? Reitwiesner cites two of McCain’s other great-great-great-great-grandparents, Capt. John Young and Mary (White), both of Ballymore, County Antrim in Ireland. That gives McCain about 3 percent Irish ancestry.

But there’s more. Another generation back, we find that McCain has Dixie Coddington and Hannah Waller of Holmpatrick, County Dublin. In fact, one of the Dixie Coddingtons was high sheriff of Dublin – though the name goes back to England.

(John Insley Coddington was one of the most prominent genealogists in the United States.)

Let’s see, who else has Irish ancestry? Well, there’s Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard University and host of the recent “African American Lives 2,” a marvelous miniseries which ran recently on Maine Public Television.

Gates, who also is director of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research, was a bit surprised when research and a DNA test revealed Irish ancestry.

I think it was a line from the Baillie clan, which researchers believe may go all the way back to Niall of the Nine Hostages, High King of Ireland from A.D. 377 to 404. (Geagans and Gahagans also are part of this clan.)

Anyway, Gates promptly made a trip to Ireland and visited some of the sites where his Irish forebears may have lived. He met lots of “cousins” touring the area, too, and told them how he had “only been Irish for 24 hours!”

My bit of Irish is all on my mom’s side of the family, so far. My great-great-grandfather, Thomas Given, was born in 1858 in Bloomfield to Irish immigrants James Given and Margaret (Orr). I don’t know their origins.

A little farther back, great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Tate Taylor was born about 1759 in Ireland to William Taylor and Martha (McReady.) I haven’t found them on any passenger lists either. They’re buried in the Steeves hometown of Hillsborough, New Brunswick.

Ever hear of Devil’s Half-Acre in Bangor? Come hear all about it when Michelle Thomas gives a talk for the Penobscot County Genealogical Society at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, in the Lecture Hall at Bangor Public Library.

Thomas is the author of two vital records books on Bangor, and did a large part of the work on the Gray genealogy.

Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or e-mail queries to familyti@bangordailynews.net.