Meghan Markle's surprising Irish roots include a Dublin wedding and Belfast catholic great-great-great grandparent.
The American actress was born and raised in Los Angeles, and shot to international fame after her marriage to Prince Harry.
But it emerged in 2019 that the Duchess of Sussex in fact has Irish ancestors in the form of Thomas Bird and Mary McCague.
The couple were married in Dublin's Donnybrook parish church on January 23, 1860.
The marriage record was unearthed in recent years in the Donnybrook parish marriage register records held in the Representative Church Body library in Rathmines.
RCB notes explain that Thomas Bird was a private in the 22nd Cheshire Regiment, based at Beggar’s Bush Barracks.
While Belfast Catholic Mary McCague was living at nearby Merrion Strand.
The discovery was made after work carried out by Fiona Fitzsimons and Helen Moss of the genealogical research group Eneclann.
They said: “Our research for the Duchess of Sussex started when we discovered the 1860 civil marriage certificate of Thomas Bird and Mary McCague, Meghan Markle’s great–great–great grandparents. It was known that Thomas Bird was in the army but no–one had thought to examine whether he might have served and married his Irish wife in Ireland.
"With this as our starting point we were able to follow Meghan Markle’s family to Malta and then to Fredericton, New Brunswick, in Canada.
“The 1860 civil marriage certificate and the entry in the Donnybrook Church of Ireland marriage register were important – they told us the name and occupation of Mary McCague’s father, Francis McCague, a farmer.
"By considering all the documents found relevant to the family (Irish, UK, USA, and Canadian), we learned that Bird/McCague was an inter–denominational marriage; in the Canadian Census the married Mary Bird (maiden name McCague, known as Mrs White by her second marriage) enumerated her children and herself as Catholic.
"The 1890 USA death record of Mary’s son, Thomas White, told us that Mary’s own origins were in Belfast.
“Eneclann was founded in 1998 as a Trinity College Campus Company, and in 2016 launched the innovative Irish Family History Centre, based in CHQ Building and partnered with EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, which was visited by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the visit to Ireland in July 2018.”
