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Yes Obama has a whopping 3.91% Irish ancestry. He actually has a lot more English ancestry. It is also obvious that with Americans that they very rarely have ancestry from just one country so all those "Irish Americans" are most likely to have English, German etc as well. So I do agree that it is misleading. What I was surprised to recently learn is that Muhammad Ali who received such a rapturous welcome in Ireland due to an apparent ancestor Abe Grady being from Co Clare does not in fact have any Irish ancestry at all.
The only well known Americans that have nearly all Irish ancestry are Stephen Colbert, Bill O'Reilly (and they both also have a very small amount of English ancestry) and Conan O'Brien. It is very rare to find Americans of full Irish ancestry especially in this day and age.
I don't know, many of the Irish-Americans I have known from my neighborhood are the descendants of Irish who immigrated to America back in the 60s and 70s (and 80s, and 90s, and even up to today). Not many generations for mixing there.
Also, in some cities like Boston and Chicago there are very large enclaves of Irish-Americans in which the community life centered around the parish and people mostly mingled and married within that parish. Of course in a city like Chicago, the Irish-Americans are likely to meet and marry a Polish person these days. Something you can't say for Ireland. Or can you?
I don't know, many of the Irish-Americans I have known from my neighborhood are the descendants of Irish who immigrated to America back in the 60s and 70s (and 80s, and 90s, and even up to today). Not many generations for mixing there.
Also, in some cities like Boston and Chicago there are very large enclaves of Irish-Americans in which the community life centered around the parish and people mostly mingled and married within that parish. Of course in a city like Chicago, the Irish-Americans are likely to meet and marry a Polish person these days. Something you can't say for Ireland. Or can you?
This is true for me too! I know a lot of people of Polish descent. I have a neighbor who is Polish and her parents were immigrants to America two years before she was born. She is in her 90s!
But most of the Irish people I met through a job I had and a majority of them were either immigrants themselves or the children of recent 20th century Irish immigrants.
I was curious too so I did some digging on Ancestry.com - Muhammad Ali's maternal grandfather was John Louis/Lewis Grady b. 1886 in Kentucky (wikipedia claims his surname was O'Grady but I can find no record of this), who's father was supposedly Abe Grady, from Ireland. But records on this family are scarce. The only record of John Louis Grady as a child is the 1900 census in which he's living with his maternal grandparents, the Walkers. He's then missing on the 1910 census and by 1920, he's married. I can't find a record that confirms his father was Abe Grady. However, supposedly John had a sister Elizabeth and on her marriage record it names her parents Abe Grady and Susie Walker. But here again, records are scarce and there's none that say Abe was from Ireland. Abe's death record (below) says birthplace unknown (and says he's black, not white like Wikipedia claims). Granted, I am only looking on Ancestry.com, maybe there are more records out there which aren't available online which confirm everything. But from first glance at the records, there doesn't appear to be any conclusive proof (or even any evidence) that Abe Grady was from Ireland.
Assuming that's the correct death record, if you ask me, a black man born in 1850 and living in Kentucky in the 1880s was most probably born a slave in the US, not an Irish immigrant. Not saying it's impossible, but come on, which is more likely to be true: that Abe was a black man born in Ireland in 1850 and he decided to immigrate to Kentucky only 10-20 years after slavery was abolished there, or that he was a former slave?
I agree with everything you said. I did a quick look on family search yesterday and found the same information. I wonder who the heck did the family tree as it is VERY poorly done. I looked at one that looks like it was on on the Heritage software and it was very shoddy and I'm hoping that whoever did it didn't get paid to do it!
I agree with everything you said. I did a quick look on family search yesterday and found the same information. I wonder who the heck did the family tree as it is VERY poorly done. I looked at one that looks like it was on on the Heritage software and it was very shoddy and I'm hoping that whoever did it didn't get paid to do it!
They are most likely relatives, and they are most likely just going off of what Muhammad Ali and his mother have always said. I don't know where Muhammad Ali (or Cassius Clay, as was his birth name) or his mother got the idea that her grandfather was a white Irishman but the records don't seem to support it. From photographs, it does look like his mother was very light skinned so maybe the claim that she had a white grandparent started there and snowballed. Just another testament to why you can't just blindly believe family stories. I'm more surprised though that the debunking of the myth hasn't been more widespread, given Muhammad Ali's level of fame, and instead the myth continues to be spread in mainstream media. What passes for journalism these days is pathetic, it's like journalists have never heard of actual research anymore.
I'm an editor on Wikipedia so I'm considering bringing this up on the "talk" page. But it's actually not mentioned in much details on Muhammad Ali's page (it only mentions his mother's name was Odessa O'Grady Clay and that he had small amounts of Irish ancestry) so I don't know if it's worth it. It goes into more details on his mother's page (ie, about Abe O'Grady being a white Irishman from Ennis, Ireland) but it's already been pointed out that Muhammad Ali's parents aren't famous in their own right and shouldn't have their own Wikipedia pages to begin with.
My father believed his grand mother was full Cherokee, we never got to meet her because he hated her for financially ruining his grand father. Recently my sister found our aunt, who ran away from home when she was young(Her mom had divorced her father and married a Hitler Youth from Germany who was very abusive), according to her my great grand mother was German. Apparently during the 1940's many Germans didn't think it was popular to be German in America, so they said they were Native Americans.
My brother doesn't want to believe this story so he's having his DNA tested, guess we'll find out soon.
My brother in law said the family lore said there was Native American on the female side of his family. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to trace this, either through genealogy or DNA on the female side.
So myth is not really fair, when all you have to go by is family lore, and that is all you will ever have. Maybe myth should be given more creadence.
I don't know, many of the Irish-Americans I have known from my neighborhood are the descendants of Irish who immigrated to America back in the 60s and 70s (and 80s, and 90s, and even up to today). Not many generations for mixing there.
Also, in some cities like Boston and Chicago there are very large enclaves of Irish-Americans in which the community life centered around the parish and people mostly mingled and married within that parish. Of course in a city like Chicago, the Irish-Americans are likely to meet and marry a Polish person these days. Something you can't say for Ireland. Or can you?
Obviously people that came in recent times would not be as mixed. Funny you mention the Polish as there are many of them in Ireland now so I'm sure many Irish-Polish mixes in the future.
According to the Polish embassy about 150,000 Poles live in Ireland, a figure it says has been stable for a number of years – since what Piotr Rakowski, deputy head of mission, calls a dramatic rate of return after the Irish economy collapsed from 2008.
They are also talking about the Irish Republic and not including Northern Ireland. Population of Republic of Ireland is approx 4.5 M. Ireland also has quite a large amount of Lithuanians as well.
I've noticed the same thing with Americans claiming to have both Irish and Native American ancestry. It's interesting that Chuck Norris would claim to be half Irish and half Native American, because in order for that to happen, one parent would have to be 100% Irish and the other parent 100% Native American. For him to be 50/50. How could he be mistaken about that? He's fairly dumb if he went around claiming to be half of each. It would have been more okay for him to say "I have some of these ancestries on both sides of the family".
It still has the same information on many searches on Chuck Norris even his Wiki page states he is Irish and Native American.
"Most of the insults were directed at his mixed race heritage, as Norris is mostly Irish and Cherokee and children of the forties and fifties weren’t exactly multi-culturally sensitive."
It's all a bit baffling as he is mostly English, Scottish, Welsh and German.
I'm not really sure why people would say they are of a different heritage than what they are. I don't know what the point would be. That's why I think possibly it might be just incorrect history on their family's part. Not sure why otherwise.
I know a young couple that DNA tested last year during Ancestry's sale. The male was trying determine how much "Indian" was in his genetic makeup, while female already knew her great-grandmother was Native American.
She has a dark olive easy tanning complexion and dark almost black brown hair. He is a blonde.
It turned out he had just under 4% NA, while her results came back zero. Apparently her family had embraced the Indian Princess myth, while her ancestor was actually Greek. His results matched the researched papertrail & contradicted sybling claims of higher percentage.
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