Tim Walz’s Irish Great-Great-Grandparents
Were Just Like Him

This Apple Didn’t Fall Far from the Tree

Whenever someone notable first grabs my attention, I can’t resist climbing the branches of their family tree to see — among other things — whether they might have a bit of Irish ancestry. Such was the case with Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate — as well as governor, teacher, coach, veteran, animal lover, and the dad everyone wishes they had.

It didn’t take long to discover that one of Gov. Walz’s great-grandmothers was named Laura Ellen Sullivan. A surname like Sullivan is a clear signal that you’re Irish-adjacent, and sure enough, her parents, James and Anna (Lacy) Sullivan were immigrants. This translates into Tim Walz’s heritage being 1/8th Irish.

Thanks to the explosion of records the Irish government has made available online over the last decade or so, I swiftly found the baptism record for James Sullivan.

What were his immigrant ancestors like? A little mucking about in online newspaper collections turned up the obituary for James Sullivan, and I found myself smiling as I read it. Anyone who’s spent much time with newspapers of this era is well aware how praise-heavy they can be — and this one is as over-the-top as they come — but this is the first time I’ve seen the writer protest that it was justified:

“This may sound fulsome and an exaggerated eulogy, but to those who knew “Uncle Jimmie” as he was familiarly known by his friends, it will be considered just and appropriate. After all, the greatest man is he who in his sphere does the most good, and Uncle Jimmie Sullivan was always ready to help a neighbor, and to him a neighbor meant every human being without exception.”

Of course, his family troubled to thank the community and you may recognize a familiar name among them:

And what about Anna Sullivan, Jimmie’s wife?

All the local paper had to say was that “Grandma Sullivan” had died and they all knew. Doesn’t it just figure that Tim Walz’s ancestors were known by everyone as Uncle Jimmie and Grandma Sullivan?

Returning to Jimmie’s obituary, I soaked up more of the writer’s commentary: “He sowed the seeds of kindness, not of hate, he reaped the rich harvest of love, for I know that James Sullivan had not one enemy in all the world, and that is the grandest epitaph that can be written on the tomb of man.”

There it was again: kindness.

Sometimes it’s the non-physical traits that get passed down in families that matter most.♦

¹ Update: The place of origin needs to be refined.

This paragraph originally read as follows: “If they’d care to, it’s Ferns¹ that can now add a politician to the newsreader, king, and rugby player on its Wikipedia page. For that matter, there’s a chance Tim Walz is related to one of them — Anne Doyle — as you’ll note in the record above that his mother was a Doyle. For that matter, anyone with Doyle, Sullivan, or Lacy roots in the Ferns might be a cousin of some sort.”

The family attended a church within the diocese of Ferns, but more specifically, it was in the parish of Kilmore. The parish of Kilmore, in turn, includes 24 townlands, so the precise location is still to be determined. I have slight reason to suspect Nemestown, but that remains a theory at this point. I understand that local historians and genealogists are on the case!

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