Tracing ancestral roots during private visit to Cooley
US Vice President Joe Biden said his six day visit to Ireland, during which he will travel to north Louth ‘ means a great deal’ to him and his family.
Speaking ahead of his visit the Vice President highlighted how important his Irish ancestors, who hail from both Louth and Mayo, were, saying ‘ they have shaped my soul’.
Mr. Biden is set to receive the ‘ Freedom of Louth’ during a civic ceremony in the Holy Trinity Heritage centre in Carlingford on Saturday afternoon.
The ceremony is likely to be the Vice President’s only public engagement during his visit to Louth, as the remainder of his visit, which the Argus believes could also include a local graveyard, will be made in private with his family.
As a result of the high profile visit, there will be a series of security measures put in place across north Louth on Saturday.
Gardai have advised that these will include ‘rolling road closures’ and traffic delays in and around Cooley.
Due to security, full details of the visit to Louth are not expected until Friday.
Mr. Biden, who is reported to be travelling with his extended family, will be seeking to trace his ancestral roots, the Finnegan’s of Whitestown during his stay, whom he said he had heard a great deal about when he was growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
‘I grew up in a household where my grandfather and grandmother Finnegan, all my mother’s brothers and my father told us about the courage and commitment it took for our relatives to emigrate from Ireland – in the midst of tragedy – to distant shores where they didn’t know what awaited them,’ he said.
‘And those values – their passion and principle, their faith and fortitude – shaped the way my siblings and I were raised.’
The Vice President’s line of ancestry has been traced back to his great grandfather James Finnegan, who was born around 1845 and died in 1895 after emigrating to Pennsylvania in the USA.
His great grandmother Catherine Roche, also from Louth, was born in 1850, and also left her home in Ireland to travel to America, via Liverpool. In an aside, the Biden name appeared to have come from the Hugenot family, who were traced back to Liverpool in 1668.
In an interview with RTE this week, where he spoke about how much he was looking forward to his visit to Ireland, Mr. Biden highlighted the family tragedy that will make his visit so poignant.
Recalling the death of his eldest son Beau in May 2015 to cancer at the age of 46 and how he had wanted to travel with him to Ireland, he said:
‘We didn’t get to make this trip. But his Irish blood – and that of my son Hunter and my daughter Ashley – held the same love of family, the same resilience, the same commitment to defending human dignity.’
Mr Biden’s trip includes visits to Dublin along with Louth and Mayo with his extended family where his ancestors, the Finnegans and the Blewitts, emigrated from during the Famine.
‘It means a great deal to me to visit the island. It’s the land from which my ancestors emigrated, seeking a better future – and now their great-great-great-grandson is vice-president of the United States of America,’ he said. ‘And their values, passed from generation to generation, have shaped my soul. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to share that heritage and this experience with my brother, my sister, my children and all my grandkids.’
The Vice President’s long awaited visit to Ireland, and indeed to the Cooley Peninsula, comes amid growing debate over immigration.
Mr Biden said he and US president Barack Obama ‘care deeply’ about immigration reform at home, pointing out that there are millions of undocumented immigrants in the US, including many Irish, ‘who share American values and contribute to US communities. They deserve to be able to take the appropriate steps to gain their citizenship.’
Mr Biden will also meet Taoiseach Enda Kenny and President Michael D Higgins during his visit to discuss US-Irish relations, trade ties and the North’s peace process.