The journey of Joe Biden’s Irish ancestors – from Counties Mayo and Louth to Scranton: How the president’s great-great grandfathers left an Ireland ravaged by famine for a new life in the U.S. 180 years ago
- Two branches of Biden’s maternal line left Ireland during the Great Famine
- The Blewitts and the Finnegans lived on different sides of the country
- But the lines came together 60 years later in Scranton, Pennsylvania
Ernie Caffrey has a gift waiting for President Joe Biden when he visits his ancestral hometown of Ballina, Co. Mayo: A brick from the home where the Blewitts lived before they left famine-ravaged Ireland for the U.S.
Caffrey’s fine art gallery stands on the spot in Garden Street where Edward Blewitt lived with his wife and eight children — in what is now known as Biden’s ancestral home.
All that remains is part of a wall and an old hearth in the backyard of the gallery.
‘I was up a ladder and down the other side to chip out these bricks,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘It took me hours.’
But it is a physical connection between an American president and the land of his forefathers, said Caffrey.
Ernie Caffrey wants to present President Joe Biden with a brick from the wall of his ancestral Blewitt home in Ballina, Co. Mayo, when the president visits at the end of this week
Biden’s maternal line emigrated from Ireland during the Great Famine. The Blewitts left Co. Mayo and settled in Scranton, PA, while the Finnegans left Co. Louth and came to New York
The story of how Biden and his Irish ancestors made it to a better life in America is the story of generations of Irish who left the island during the years of the great hunger, sailing often from Liverpool to New York.
Two branches of Biden’s mother’s family — the Finnegans from the eastern county of Louth and the Blewitts from the western county of Mayo — made a similar journey at a similar time.
READ MORE: How 27,000 bricks from Biden’s great-great-great grandfather helped build the cathedral where he’ll speak in Ireland
In all, 10 of his 16 great-great grandparents were from the Emerald Isle, making him ‘among the most Irish’ of all U.S. presidents, according to the Irish Family History Centre.
Ballina was one of the places worst hit by the potato famine that cut down an entire generation of Irish people. An estimated million people died.
When the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle visited the town in 1849, he wrote that the population was ‘gone to workhouse, to England, to the grave.’
Edward Blewitt, a prosperous engineer and businessman, plumped for the U.S. His son, Patrick, Biden’s great-great grandfather, traveled first as a 20-year-old cabinboy to scope out prospects.
When he returned two years later they were ready to set out in style.
While most families went one by one, scrimping and saving to afford the fare, Blewitt could afford to take the whole family on the SS Excelsior in 1851, his fortunes bolstered by the sale of 27,000 bricks to the local cathedral.
After the crossing family settled first in Carbondale, Pennsylvania.
But within a decade they were living in Scranton, where Edward Blewitt helped lay out the streets.
Biden is due to arrive in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday evening for a four-day visit. He is due to spend time in Co. Louth and on Friday ends his speech with a public speech in Ballina
Caffrey standing by the hearth of the old Blewitt home in Ballina Co. Mayo. He has decorated it with red, white and blue spring flowers and American flags for the occasion
Ballina is gearing up to welcome President Biden on Friday during his four-day Ireland trip
Joe Blewitt is a third cousin of Joe Biden, and has visited the White House for St Patrick’s Day. Excitement is building in Ballina, a town of 10,000 people in Co. Mayo
It was a familiar destination for people from Mayo at that time. And in 1990 Ballina was twinned with the town, a move that predated Biden’s links being discovered.
If the west of Ireland was the area worst affected by the famine, then the Cooley peninsula was one of the worst hit parts of the east. It is here that the tumbledown remains of the Finnegan home still stand. The name features on gravestones in nearby Kilwirra cemetery.
Biden visited the graveyard during a 2016 visit. It stands close to the coastline that would have been the Finnegans’ last view of Ireland as left on the ‘famine ships’, and at its center is a ruined church where they would once have worshiped.
Owen Finnegan, Biden’s great-great grandfather left Ireland in 1849, sailing on the Brothers from the nearby port of Newry. His profession was listed as locksmith, although other records say he was a shoemaker.
The rest of the family, including nine-year-old James — the president’s great grandfather — followed a year late on the Marchioness of Bute.
The grave of Thomas Finnegan an ancestor of President Joe Biden is seen in Kilwirra cemetery near Whitestown, Co. Louth. Biden’s great-great grandfather sailed from here in 1849
Biden with restaurant staff outside Fitzpatrick’s Restaurant and Pub after a family lunch, in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland, during his 2016 visit
The settled first in Ovid, New York. James was partially sighted, according to research by Jean Smolenyak, which meant he avoided service in the Civil War and rather than becoming a shoemaker like his father and instead took up the fiddle.
By the time his youngest son Ambrose was born in 1884 the family was in Olyphant, near Scranton. And that is where the lines merged, with Ambrose marrying Geraldine Blewitt in 1909.
Their daughter Catherine was Biden’s mother.
The extended families mean both Co. Mayo and Co. Louth are littered with relatives.
‘There’s so many Finnegans over here it’s unbelievable,’ said Donal Marks, 81, a distant cousin.
He described how the Finnegans are nicknamed locally to separate out each line. He’s from the ‘Fick’ line (he doesn’t remember how it was named). There are the Steves and then the Owens.
The old Finnegan house in Whitestown, Co. Louth. Owen Finnegan left for the U.S. in 1849
Donal Marks, 81, a distant cousin of Biden still lives in the area and met Biden during his 2016 visit to Louth. ‘There’s so many Finnegans over here it’s unbelievable,’ he said
‘That’s the one that matters,’ he said around the kitchen table of the house he had built when he returned from a career in England. That is the line that resides in the White House.
He and his wife Bernie were among the guests when Biden stopped by the old family pub, Lily Finnegan’s.
‘He was very much at home,’ said Bernie. ‘He was quite happy to go around and talk to everyone. I’ve never seen such a relaxed person.
‘His brother was having a drink and his daughter was pulling pints. It was like they had always been here.’
Biden arrived with a sheaf of papers and was busily showing everyone how they were related.
‘He had it all written down, the whole tree,’ said Bernie, ‘and he was showing everyone.’
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