How Irish Are We?

Lá ‘le Pádraig sona dhaoibh!

That, according to this webpage, at least, means "Happy St. Patrick's Day". My apologies to all Irish Gaelic speakers if it actually says something profane.

In honor of the patron saint of Ireland, today's post will focus on "How Irish Are We?" This is a surprising difficult question because the answer depends on what you mean by "Irish". Does this term refer to everyone born or raised on the island? Does it require a particular ancestry, such as native or gaelic Irish (as opposed to, say, Scotch-Irish)? Does it require a particular religion?

The Feast of St. Patrick is an acknowledged holy day for the Catholic church, but also for the Anglican Church of Ireland, the Lutherans, and some other protestant sects. It is an official holiday both in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland (still part of Great Britain). Therefore, one could argue that it is a holiday that belongs to all Irish.

That one would not be me, however. The celebration of St. Patrick developed among the (particularly American) diaspora as a celebration of native or Gaelic Irish culture and the Irish Catholic religious traditions. St. Patrick's day was a nationalist holiday, mostly celebrated, for obvious political reasons, by those who no longer lived in the nation in question.

The majority of Irish Catholic, or Gaelic Irish, to immigrate to this country came during or after the Potato Famine, an Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger), during which at least one million people died (many estimates put it closer to two million) and another million found their way to the Americas on the famine ships. My mother, who is 1/4 Gaelic Irish, has one line that exemplifies this history. Her great-great-grandparents, Joseph and Elizabeth Rooney, sailed into New York, in steerage, on a dangerously over-crowded ship, in 1848. Their eldest (surviving) child was born at sea.

The Rooneys spent relatively little time in New York. They soon moved to Wisconsin where they farmed and their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Robert Cunningham. Robert and Elizabeth (Rooney) Cunningham were my mother's great-grandparents.

The Cunninghams represent a different path of Irish immigration. Maurice and Elizabeth Cunningham were born and raised in County Cork, but came to this country in 1828, well before the Great Hunger forced so many Irish from their homes. I don't know why they chose to come to this country, but unlike most Irish immigrants of the Famine period, Maurice Cunningham was a skilled worker. He gave his occupation as carpenter at immigration, and he was soon head gardener on a very large and successful estate in New York. I assume, like many immigrants before and after, Maurice and Elizabeth Cunningham came to the United States for new opportunities they were denied back home.

Those two families are the only immigrants from Ireland on my mother's side, making her, as I said, 1/4 Gaelic Irish. My brother and I are, then, 1/8 Gaelic Irish.

On my father's side, the question is harder to answer because most of his Irish ancestry is more remote, and we don't always know their ethnic or religious affiliations. In most cases, however, his Irish ancestry is clearly Scotch-Irish. The Deans, for example, were Ulster Scots who immigrated to the mid-Atlantic region in the early 1700s. In fact, the only possible exception is the Houghton family, whose origins might be in County Cork and who might have been Catholic. That line, however, is not well researched. If we expand the definition of Irish to include all those who immigrated from the island (which I don't necessary advocate, as I said above), then my father is between 11 and 15% Irish, mostly through his mother's Manary line.

How did I calculate that? If we go back to his 6th great-grandparents, then we have (mostly) gone back to or past the first immigrants to the U.S. I can't actually trace every one of his lines back that far, but I assume that an immigrant 5th great-grandparent born in Ireland had parents from Ireland. That might not be true (in particular, they my have been Scots), but it's a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, I can't trace every one of his lines back to the country of origin. Some of his family lines I know for certain came from Ireland (such as the Deans and the Manarys), but others, like the Dooleys, I'm guessing based on their last name. My father has 28 6xgreat-grandparents who were certainly from Ireland, and another 11 who were probably from Ireland. Since he has 256 6xgreat-grandparents, that makes him 11-15% Irish.

My brother and I, then, are 18-20% Irish.

Tabhair póg dom, táim Éireannach! (supposedly, "Kiss me, I'm Irish". Again with the apologies.)