Racists!
(AP) — President Barack Obama found out years ago he had an Irish ancestor who fled the potato famine in Ireland in 1850. He can now claim 28 living relatives who also descended from that Irishman, including a Vietnam veteran, a school nurse and a displeased Arizona Republican.
The president’s newly identified relatives are revealed in a study released to The Associated Press by Ancestry.com, a family history website whose genealogists also traced descendants of 23 other Irish passengers on the ship that brought Falmouth Kearney to the United States when he was 19.
The survey allowed genealogists to further trace branches in Obama’s family tree and others who arrived on the ship, known as the Marmion, on March 20, 1850.
According to the survey, the passengers’ descendants live in Canada, Syria and throughout the United States. Among Obama’s newly identified relatives is 83-year-old Dorma Lee Reese, of Tucson, Ariz.
“I’m not a Democrat, so I can’t say I clapped,” said Reese, a retired brain-imaging technologist. “I don’t appreciate what he’s done by any means, but I do appreciate that he holds that office.”
Kearney arrived with his brother-in-law William and his wife, Margaret Cleary. They were destined for Ohio, where Kearney’s relative had left property in his name. Kearney married, had 10 children and later settled in Indiana, where he worked as a farmer.
Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was a descendant of one of Kearney’s daughters, Mary Ann Kearney, and Jacob William Dunham. The White House didn’t immediately return a message Wednesday seeking comment on the president’s Irish heritage.
When the 903-ton Marmion arrived after a 3,000-mile voyage to New York Harbor from Liverpool, England, carrying 289 passengers, it was following a well-worn route used by masses of Irish immigrants.
Ancestry.com revealed Obama’s Irish roots and his connection to Kearney in 2007, but it is uncovering its new findings this week following months of work as part of a larger project on Irish heritage.
“We had this idea of trying to look at a micro-study of how Irish immigrants have impacted the United States,” said Anastasia Harman, the lead family historian for Ancestry.com.
Other distant Obama relatives include Roma Joy Palmer, 66, of Mulvane, Kan., who is retired from the insurance business, and Daniel Dillard, 63, a Vietnam War veteran and retired community college professor.
“I really don’t like to claim a relationship to Obama. He is not my favorite president,” said Palmer, a Republican. “I don’t have anything against him personally. But I don’t think we have the same agenda.”
Dillard, though, said he took pride in his family “being related to a president of the United States,” even though he is a registered Republican, did not vote for Obama and opposes his politics.