Irish village revels in its ties to ‘O’Bama’

Los Angeles Times

MONEYGALL, Ireland — Until recently, Moneygall’s most famous son wasn’t even human. It was a horse, Papillon, who streaked to the title as a long shot in a nail-biter at Britain’s prestigious Grand National race in 2000.

But for months now, the modest sign marking Papillon’s achievement has been muscled aside by pictures celebrating the new hero in this tiny pit stop on the Dublin-to-Limerick road: President Barack Obama — or, as they like to call him here, Barack O’Bama.

An out-of-the-blue call from the United States, some yellowing church records and an iPhone-toting priest have earned bragging rights for Moneygall as the “ancestral home” — one of them, anyway — of the leader of the free world.

How the family connection came about is the quintessential story of America as a nation of immigrants and Ireland as a land that supplied them, including Obama’s great-great-great-granddaddy on his mother’s side, a cobbler from Moneygall. How the tie was unearthed more than 100 years later and how news of it spread across the globe is a testament to 21st-century instant communication, Obama’s star power in Europe and the natural gregariousness of the Irish.

Since the discovery of its link to Obama a little less than two years ago, Moneygall (population 298) has been catapulted out of its sleepy backwater and into the international spotlight.

Camera crews from distant countries flocked to the village during the U.S. presidential race, eager to capture reaction at the neighborhood pub, between pints of Guinness, to Obama’s primary and election victories. “There’s No One as Irish as Barack Obama,” an infectious song by a Limerick-based band, became a YouTube sensation and landed the group a recording contract.

Moneygall’s merchants, including the glazier and a plumbing company, have happily seized the opportunity for some self-promotion, plastering Obama’s face on their ads. A politician, meanwhile, wants to erect an Obama heritage center.

It’s the most attention ever lavished on the village, where you can find two pubs, a small general store, an ice cream vendor, a car dealership and a single traffic signal, if you don’t blink.

Stephen Neill, 39, a Protestant rector of the Church of Ireland, played a key role in establishing Moneygall’s contribution to Obama’s existence and propelling the community to worldwide fame.

In April 2007, an e-mail popped up in Neill’s inbox from someone with Ancestry.com, a genealogical research outfit in Utah, requesting information potentially buried somewhere in the archives of Neill’s parish. The e-mail didn’t mention Obama.

The researcher followed up with a phone call explaining that his interest in the Kearneys, a family from the old Templeharry parish, was part of an attempt to draw Obama’s family tree. Neill, who had read Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope,” was hooked.

From a parishioner’s home, he retrieved a set of tattered ledgers and began thumbing through lists of baptisms, marriages and deaths dating back to 1799. Within a couple of hours, he had located entries that confirmed the presence of a couple named Joseph and Phoebe Kearney (variously spelled Karney, Kearny and Carny).