Roots detective Megan Smolenyak explores the National Library of Ireland’s online collection of Catholic parish registers, uncovers entries for ancestors of a few well-know Irish Americans, including Bruce Springsteen, and offers a guide to finding yours.
Ancestors of Irish American Celebrities in New Online Catholic Parish Registers
The last few years have been kind to those … [Read more...] about On the Prowl for Springsteen’s
Irish Roots
Megan Smolenyak
On the Prowl for Springsteen’s
Photo Album:
The Shields Family
I’ve written about several Irish American mothers for this magazine – Eugenia Biden, Lorna Colbert, and Anne Meara – and the word that always comes to mind is indomitable. Nothing breaks them, which makes it all the more shocking when we lose them. My mother was a member of this club.
The last-minute child in a Jersey City family that included two older sisters, Mom was named … [Read more...] about Photo Album:
The Shields Family
“Fully” Kearney: President Obama’s Irish Ancestor
It was seven years ago when I identified Fulmoth Kearney of Moneygall, Ireland as the most recent immigrant on the maternal side of Barack Obama’s family tree. Inheriting land in Ohio from a brother, Fulmoth’s father, Joseph, left Ireland for the United States in 1849. Fulmoth and his sister, Margaret, followed in 1850, and his mother and two younger siblings in 1851 – a … [Read more...] about “Fully” Kearney: President Obama’s Irish Ancestor
Hillary Clinton’s Celtic Roots
Until now, the many genealogists who have researched Hillary Clinton’s ancestry have attached her Welsh grandmother, Hannah Jones, to the wrong parents. Roots detective Megan Smolenyak homes in on Clinton’s Welsh heritage and sets the record straight. When it was announced that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame for her work on the … [Read more...] about Hillary Clinton’s Celtic Roots
Jersey Boys:
Irish American Soldiers in World War I
America entered World War One on April 6th, 1917, and though the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 greatly angered the influential Irish-American community on America’s East Coast, many Irish and Irish-Americans saw it as their duty to enlist. Megan Smolenyak looks at the great state of New Jersey and profiles several of those soldiers, including … [Read more...] about Jersey Boys:
Irish American Soldiers in World War I