POLITICAL GENEALOGY
Joe Biden’s Irish Roots
This is an updated version of an article that was first published in Irish America in 2013, but for obvious reasons, has become freshly relevant.
How can you not love a name like Finnegan Biden? I find it charming when family names are given fresh life in ensuing generations, and that’s exactly what happened in the lineage bracketing Joe Biden. His beloved mother Jean’s full name was Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden. Subtract “Catherine Eugenia” and you have the name of one of his granddaughters — Finnegan Biden. Whether she knows it or not, there’s a lot of history tucked into her first name.
My guess is that she’s heard some of it from her grandfather, who likes to tell tales about his own grandfather Ambrose Finnegan, but she probably doesn’t know everything I’m about to share. As a professional genealogist, I’m something of a retro-journalist who delves into people’s family histories, and given my own Irish roots, I have a soft spot for anyone who shares that heritage — from Barack Obama to Barry Manilow. So I suppose it was inevitable that Biden would take a turn under my past-seeking microscope. Before probing more deeply, let’s step back and take a look at the big picture — well, the Irish part of that picture.
