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
Roots
Roots: The Macs
This issue’s Roots column is slightly different from the traditional format. Instead of looking at a single surname, or different but etymologically related surnames, I examine three unique but phonetically and geographically related family names. This is in part practical – the names are relatively uncommon compared to our usual surnames, so information on them is scarcer – … [Read more...] about Roots: The Macs
Roots: Lynch
One of the 100 most common surnames in Ireland, the Lynch name derives from several independent clans who inhabited just about everywhere from Ulster to Cork. The most notorious of the Irish Lynches, though not the largest clan, comes from the Norman de Lench, who were the most powerful of the 14 “Tribes of Galway,” Norman clans who ruled the medieval city. These Lynches were … [Read more...] about Roots: Lynch
Roots: The Ulster Clans O’Neill and O’Donnell
Outside the city limits of ancient Rome at the top of the Janiculum hill is the 15th century church of San Pietro in Montorio. The church was supposedly built on the site where Saint Peter was crucified in 64 C.E. and its courtyard holds a small, circular, domed building meant to mark the exact spot of his crucifixion. The “Tempietto” (lit. “little temple”) was built by Italian … [Read more...] about Roots: The Ulster Clans O’Neill and O’Donnell
Clan Kennedy:
Of Presidents and Kings
Camelot might be a misnomer. Brían Boru, the last High King of Ireland, was a Kennedy.
The O’Kennedy genealogies, held by the Royal Irish Academy, record that Ceineidi, King of Thomond, was the father of Brían Bóruma mac Cennétig (c. 941 – 1014), today known as Brían Boru, the last Ard Ri or High King of all of Ireland.
This genealogy traces President John Fitzgerald … [Read more...] about Clan Kennedy:
Of Presidents and Kings