Bush was a uniter; Obama's a divider

It all started just around the inauguration in 2009. Maybe it was before that. Election Day? I can't quite remember now, but it was around that time. Before Barak Obama became President of the United States the people of this state were united, beautifully so.

There had been some straws in the wind even before the election, but once it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be President the real fight started. Neighbor turned on neighbor, brother on brother.

I had never even heard of Moneygall before Obama came along. Why would I have? I'm sure I've driven through it on my way to Limerick, but 300 people live there. It made no impression. Believe me, I wasn't the only one in Ireland who had never heard of Moneygall before.

When it transpired that Barack Obama is descended from a Falmouth Kearney, who left Moneygall for New York in 1850 suddenly the town (hamlet, more like) started making the news. The instant reaction of most people was, "Where? What did he say? Moneyball? Isn't that a book by Michael Lewis?" Okay, that last one was only me, but you get the picture. Nobody knew nor cared about Moneygall. God be with the days.

Now we have two counties practically ready to go to war over Moneygall. Although the media has repeatedly described Moneygall as being in County Offaly, it apparently could be considered to be in County Tipperary too. I only found this out today, thanks to the Irish Independent.

To my eye it seems that Offaly has the stronger claim, but let's face it the American media is going to be much happier with Tipperary - it's a known quantity - than Offaly. I can already hear it: "How do you pronounce that? Awfully?" Accuracy be damned, Tipperary has a strong hand here.

And then there's Kilkenny. The people of County Kilkenny want in on the action. "Moneygall? Offaly? Tipperary? Show me the ancestors!" they demand. You see, Falmouth's family left little by way of a permanent mark on Moneygall, but going back a bit further there is a definite relative - a grand-grand...uncle - Bishop John Kearney who is entombed in St Canice's Cathedral {photo} in the beautiful city of Kilkenny.

Now it's really getting ugly. You don't have a direct line in Kilkenny, but you have an actual tomb and it's a beautiful spot. Not just beautiful, but lively. The President's people will love Kilkenny and so will the American press.

You see how Obama has divided the people? The desire to claim him as a 'native son' could easily lead to blood, war, ruin. Offaly? Tipperary? Kilkenny? Bad-tempered hurling matches engender less bad feeling.

It was all so much simpler with President Bush. No county, no town or hamlet claimed him or wanted to be associated with him. (I think there was some distant connection, but it's been officially buried.) From Election Day in 2000 until he left office, the people of Ireland were quite content and of one mind in detesting the man.

Didn't matter what he did, they were against it. Every word out of his mouth was greeted with a sneer and every action with a protest. Those were happier times.

Now the country is choosing sides in a three-way battle to make Obama their own. It won't end well. As we all know, the Irish have long memories and this division will take generations to heal.

Irish roots: How my grandfather was hidden at Ellis Island

My Aunt Kathleen is the family genealogist. She literally wrote the book on our Irish American family. Yet, she hadn't been able to find any record of my grandfather's entry from Ireland into the U.S.

No one knew when he entered or where, but we had a good idea that he'd first come to America in 1916 and we were pretty sure he'd come to New York. He had brothers and a sister already there, so it had to be New York.

That meant he had to have come through Ellis Island - but there was no sign of him in their records. There was no difficulty finding my grandfather's brother, Rodger, who passed through Ellis Island in May 1913. That only added to the frustration. We knew my grandfather's name, obviously, we knew what year he was born, where he was from (sort of – more on that later) and we had a pretty good idea what year he immigrated.

So why didn't he turn up on the Ellis Island records ( www.ellisisland.org)?

The Ellis Island search facility is very flexible. You can search by a range of years by birth or by entry to the United States. You can even search by a partial last name. Yet not one of those bore fruit.

My grandfather's name was John Fahy when he left New Quay, County Clare and he, along with his immigrant siblings, changed his name to Fay at some point. Today we can only guess as to why they did this.

I searched for Fahy, Fay, Fa*, but nothing. I searched for people from New Quay whose last name began with Fa, but no luck.

I talked to my father about it and he concluded that his father had probably entered through Boston or Philadelphia and traveled on to New York. Given there was a war on at the time, it made sense that he might not have had the same number of options for traveling to America as those who traveled in peacetime. He might well have sailed to one of those cities.

Then one afternoon I had a brainwave. I'm not much of a genealogist, but I've used computers for nearly 30 years and I know how things can go wrong. And one adage that all heavy computer users know is, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

It occurred to me that the computerized records I was searching weren't always computerized. Someone had to key them in. So I started searching for misspellings for the name Fahy.

And I found him.

Ellis Island has him listed as John Tahy, who arrived in November 1915. The Ellis Island Web site not only lets you search the records, but when you find the record you want, you can view an image of the actual immigration record. Everything was there.

His U.S. address was his brother Pat's place in Palisades Park, N.J. He paid for his own passage and, although it's tough to make out, it looks like he had £20 on him.

He had traveled on the SS Saint Louis and, happily, he was neither a polygamist nor an anarchist. He was presumably in good health as no mention is made of it in the appropriate area. He is listed as being 5'10” with hazel eyes, fair hair, fair complexion and no marks of identification.

He was a British subject – it was 1915 – and a member of the Irish race. He came from Finvara, Ireland. Yep, Finvara (Finivara or Finavarra), not New Quay.

His brother had arrived two years earlier and listed his hometown as New Quay. The address (today, anyway) would be Finavarra, New Quay, County Clare.

The combination of the misspelled last name and the variations in hometown name had made my grandfather all but invisible. All because someone misread a capital F as a capital T.

Just about anyone familiar with Irish names would have known that Tahy is not an Irish name. If the person who entered the data from the Saint Louis's manifest of November 11, 1915 had known that Fahy was more likely than Tahy they might well have looked twice at the legible, cursive entry for my grandfather.

Handwriting styles change and I can see how someone who is not of Irish descent might have thought the name was Tahy. I would wager that most of the other 34 listed Tahys – many of whom seem to have come from the same part of Ireland as my grandfather – should also be Fahys.

The moral of the story is, if you're searching computerized records and you can't find a relative who you know should be there, remember that the person who typed the data in could have made a simple error – one that no one would notice, but one that will certainly frustrate you.

Think about handwriting, think about the drudgery of entering data from handwritten records and start searching for simple erroneous versions of the name you are searching for.