CELEBRITY GENEALOGY

5 Things You Didn’t Know about Melissa McCarthy’s Roots

Melissa McCarthy in 2018 and her great-grandmother Sarah

Easily one of the most popular and reliable box office performers today, actress, comedian, producer, and fashion designer Melissa McCarthy has a lot to be proud of. With a string of hits (Bridesmaids, Identity Thief, The Heat, Spy!, The Boss, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, etc.) that consistently deliver an enviable ROI and her ability to make us momentarily forget the world’s problems (who will ever forget her take on Sean Spicer?), she leaves us hungry for whatever’s next. But as a genealogist, I dwell in the past and decided to take her role in Ghostbusters as inspiration to do a little ghost-searching — that is, for the ancestors who populate McCarthy’s family tree. Here’s what I learned.

1. As many probably assume, Melissa McCarthy is of mostly Irish heritage (though with a twist — more on this shortly) — roughly 69%. German comes in second with 19% and the remaining 12% is deep American, mostly tracing back to England. Surnames in her past include Brolley, Burke, Carty, Clark, Condon, Connelly, Cook, Coyne, Dagenhart, Daley, Gallacher, Garvie, Green, Hoffman, Hughes, Humphries, McFayden, McGerrick, McLaughlin, Moore, O’Reilly, Owens, Quinn, and Walsh, so if you share any of these, you could be cousins, especially if your family hails from Illinois, Indiana, Ireland or Scotland.