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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
National
Cian O'Broin

Is Joe Biden Irish? US President's Irish roots explained - who is he related to, where is his family from and when did they move to America?

With Joe Biden landing in Ireland ahead of a packed itinerary, including visits to two different places where his family came from, we take a look at exactly how Irish the 46th US president really is.

According to the Irish Family History Centre, President Biden is among the most Irish of all US presidents, with 20 of the previous leaders of the free world also boasting Irish heritage.

10 of his 16 great-great-grandparents come from the Emerald Isle comprising of the Arthurs, Blewitts, Boyles, Roches, Scanlons and Stantons on his mother's side, with just one-eighth, adding the name Hanafee, from his father's.

Read More: LIVE updates as US President Joe Biden arrives in Ireland for four-day visit

His main Irish relations come from the Blewitts from Co Mayo, and the Finnegans and Kearneys from Co Louth.

His 19th century great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt (1795-1872), an ordnance surveyor, was born in Ballina in Co Mayo. One of his four children, Geraldine was married to a man named Ambrose Finnegan.

They had a daughter, Catherine Finnegan, who was Joe's mother.

After the famine hit Ballina hard in 1845, Edward Blewitt went to work in a union workhouse in the Mayo town.

Patrick Blewitt, born in Ballina, was the first of the family to move stateside in 1850, to become a sailor, returning a year later to bring his parents, brothers and sisters to America. By 1860, the Blewitts had settled in Pennsylvania.

On the other side, Owen Finnegan, Biden's great-great-grandfather from the Cooley Peninsula in Louth, left for America in 1840. They worked the land and sea.

They settled in Seneca, New York in the 1850s. After Owen's death, his son James Finnegan, moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania to settle, where the Blewitts were and the two families met.

Most notably in Ireland, Biden is related to the Tommy, Hector and Laurita Podcast's Laurita Blewitt on one side and former Ireland rugby international Rob Kearney on the other side, both as distant cousins.

Biden is expected to visit the last remaining remnants of his ancestral great-great-grandfather's home in Ballina during his visit to Ireland, where a fireplace and a wall of the cottage still remain.

He is set to make an address at St Muredach's Cathedral in Ballina in Mayo this coming Friday.

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