The survey allowed genealogists to further trace branches in Obama’s family tree and others who arrived on the ship, known as the Marmion, on March 20, 1850.

According to the survey, the passengers’ descendants live in Canada, Syria and throughout the United States. Among Obama’s newly identified relatives is 83-year-old Dorma Lee Reese, of Tucson, Ariz.

“I’m not a Democrat, so I can’t say I clapped,” said Reese, a retired brain-imaging technologist. “I don’t appreciate what he’s done by any means, but I do appreciate that he holds that office.”

Kearney arrived with his brother-in-law William and his wife, Margaret Cleary. They were destined for Ohio, where Kearney’s relative had left property in his name. Kearney married, had 10 children and later settled in Indiana, where he worked as a farmer.

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was a descendant of one of Kearney’s daughters, Mary Ann Kearney, and Jacob William Dunham. The White House didn’t immediately return a message Wednesday seeking comment on the president’s Irish heritage.

When the 903-ton Marmion arrived after a 3,000-mile voyage to New York Harbor from Liverpool, England, carrying 289 passengers, it was following a well-worn route used by masses of Irish immigrants.

Among the carpenters, bricklayers and shoemakers arriving that day was Kearney, listed in records only as a laborer.

Like many of the passengers, he was fleeing a country ravaged by a potato blight that destroyed families and livelihoods and left the country starving. From the 1840s to the end of the 1850s, about 1.7 million Irish immigrants came to the United States.

On the day of the Marmion’s arrival, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the St. Patrick’s Society in Brooklyn had held its first annual banquet; a toast was made to the passengers’ homeland, referring to it by its ages-old nickname: “Though gloomy shadows hang o’er thee now … as darkness is densest, even just before day, So thy gloom, truest Erin, may soon pass away.”

By 1860, the city had the largest Irish population in the world outside Ireland. Nearly 37 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry in 2009, according to census estimates.

Ancestry.com revealed Obama’s Irish roots and his connection to Kearney in 2007, but it is uncovering its new findings this week following months of work as part of a larger project on Irish heritage.

“We had this idea of trying to look at a micro-study of how Irish immigrants have impacted the United States,” said Anastasia Harman, the lead family historian for Ancestry.com.

Other distant Obama relatives include Roma Joy Palmer, 66, of Mulvane, Kan., who is retired from the insurance business, and Daniel Dillard, 63, a Vietnam War veteran and retired community college professor.

“I really don’t like to claim a relationship to Obama. He is not my favorite president,” said Palmer, a Republican. “I don’t have anything against him personally. But I don’t think we have the same agenda.”

Dillard, though, said he took pride in his family “being related to a president of the United States,” even though he is a registered Republican, did not vote for Obama and opposes his politics.

Sandra West, 65, of Hereford, Ariz., also was identified by Ancestry.com but had already discovered years ago that she was distantly related to Obama when she investigated the Dunhams of Kansas.

“I figured there had to be a connection somewhere,” she said.

West, who works as a nurse at Palominas Elementary School, said that it had become a running joke and that the principal had suggested requesting a tour of the White House. But West figured the president already had enough going on.

“I don’t think he would want to pay much attention to me,” she said. “I’m sort of a peon down the road. I’m nobody special.”

——

Online:

http://www.Ancestry.com/Irishrecords

The entire episode was a million miles from my childhood experience on St. Patrick’s. Back then, we walked to church in our best winter coats, sporting our sprigs of freshly pulled shamrocks from the fields. And that homegrown, 1960s version is another million miles from Ireland’s current Disney-fied extravaganza that borrows backward from its American counterpart.  

The next day, March 18, I soaked my blistered waitress’s feet and tallied the day’s tips. Over one very long day of pushing through the crowds with plastic cups of beer,  I had doubled my weekly salary as a primary school teacher back home. Only three months in my newly adopted country, and I’d already learned that the wearin’ o’ the green had a real payoff.

And a price.

For the next 24 years, I would learn just what that price was (and is) each time some stranger or acquaintance mimics my accent — the “faith ‘n begorrah,” Barry Fitzgerald version. Or each time someone calls me Colleen, because “that’s what all you Irish girls are named.” Or each time some idiot tells me the ”seven-course Irish dinner”  (a six pack and a potato) joke. Or each time I decline that last drink for the road to a chorus of, ”Aw, Jesus, you’re Irish. You must drink.” 

 Would these jokesters mimic any other non-native accent — say, Latina or Chinese or French Canadian — back to its speaker? Except for a wincing glance, I’ve only spoken up once — a silence I never maintain when faced with slurs that demean other groups.

It makes me wonder if, over the course of 24 years, I’ve internalized the message that the Irish in America are supposed to be great old fun. That we’re exempt from the standard politesse that tries to purge insult from our sidewalks, our workplaces and our public discourse. From Hollywood to the Hamptons, from the St. Patrick morning roasts to the “devil-knows-your-dead” toasts, we Irish have fed this sense of ourselves as the group in America who can take the joke — however demeaning and stereotypical that joke is.

Historically, a series of Punch cartoons (“The Bogtrotters,” “The Irish Ogre”) in the mid-to-late 1800s portrayed the newly arrived Irish in America as drunk, illiterate and racially inferior. The cartoonists gave us a flat nose, pronounced mouth and lips, low forehead, and an air of brutishness. According to one historian, ”Americans in the mid-1800s were just beginning to consider the theory of evolution … in the Irishmen, they detected animalistic qualities.”  

In the 1800s, the Irish were not alone. The African-Americans, along with the newly arrived Chinese and Germans, all had their ethnic or national traits misrepresented, exaggerated and mocked. 

But today, when our 21st century gift shops and drug stores sport their racks of “Happy St. Patty’s” greeting cards every year, I’m not convinced that the 1800s Punch cartoons are a thing of the past. As I look at those cards with their palsied-faced “St. Patty’s” drunks and the overflowing beer mugs, I know that I’ve never seen a Kwanzaa, a Hanukkah or a Chinese New Year card that depicts its annual celebration (and its celebrants) through such buffoonish cartoons.

Until that changes, there’s little of today’s St. Patrick’s I consider part of my heritage.   

I prepared dinner and, knowing the serving time would be loose given her husband’s schedule, I kept everything at a simmer, ready once he was able to break away. As time crept on and the children grew restless, Sue made a phone call on the front porch while I kept the girls busy with a video, and while her son surreptitiously ate every one of the scones I had laid out on a decorative platter in the center of the table.

She came in off the porch, her face disappointed in practiced lines, full of apology for her husband’s absence, and then her eyes widened in horror when she realized her son, a notoriously picky eater, had scarfed down all of the scones. “I am so sorry….” she began.

I stopped her right there, sat her down at the kitchen table, poured her a second glass of wine, started a new movie for the kids, and made another batch of scones so that we’d be on for dinner in twenty minutes. The way she sank into the chair, at ease. I’ll never forget it. As if it had been forever since she had exhaled so deeply.

This year, I watched as her mansion was sold for less than half of its appraised value, packed with her — years of boxed-up memories — helped her find a much more modest home, and sat with her as the movers made it all final.

As the moving van drove away, I laid back onto the concrete of her new front stoop, groaning as my spine relaxed. She sat down beside me, looking like a wrung-out dishcloth, threadbare and forlorn. She has looked that way for several years. Soon, after more than twenty years as a stay-at-home mom, at the age of sixty, she will have to find a full time job.

I said, “The saddest thing, Sue, is that you never got your doctor’s wife boobs.”

“You have engineer’s wife boobs,” she said.

“With those boobs you could be the secret wife of a Catholic priest.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s probably true.”

We were tired beyond laughter, and we laughed, grateful that we could.

Tonight, Sue will again join us for St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll make a vegetarian stew, potato and cabbage cakes browned in butter, and the “Irish soda bread” scones that marked the true start of our friendship. We don’t make sense. She won’t eat collard greens. I don’t drink wine. Our daughters do not speak. Yet, we will feast and break scones, and love one another for one more year. At least.

“Irish Soda Bread” Scones

There is no baking soda in these scones, but with the golden raisins and the caraway seeds, they are very reminiscent of the Irish Soda Bread I make. These bake up faster than a traditional soda bread loaf, and because they are already portioned, they are easy to share with neighbors and friends.

2 C all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
4 Tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
5 Tbsp butter, very cold, cut into small pieces
¾ C golden raisins
1 Tbsp caraway seeds
1 C heavy cream (plus a little more to brush on the top of the scones)

1. Preheat your oven to 425.
2. In a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Pulse a few times. Dot the top butter across the top of the flour mixture and pulse fifteen times. Add the raisins and the caraway seeds. Pulse a few more times to mix them in.
3. Pour the cream over the top and pulse briefly, until the mixture begins to come together. Dump the mixture (there will be some dry, floury bits still unmixed) onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently until you can form it into a ball. It will look a little craggy and that’s okay. Don’t knead it too much.
4. Pat into a circle that is about 8 inches across, and cut into eight wedges. Place each scone couple of inches apart on a lightly greased cookie sheet (or use parchment or silpat). Brush the top of each scone with a bit of cream, and sprinkle lightly with sea salt and caraway seeds.
5. Bake for about 15 minutes (check them at 12), or until the tops are light brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Serve with butter and orange marmalade and good friends.