New Irish Obama cousins found, say researchers

US President Barack Obama will be greeted by more Irish cousins when he visits the country next week, after research uncovered new branches of his ancestral family, researchers said. Dick Benn, a fifth cousin once removed, and Tom Donovan, a third cousin three times removed, have been invited to welcome Obama to Moneygall, the Irish village where his great-great-great-grandfather hailed from, Eneclann, a family history research company, said in a statement. An eighth cousin of Obama, Henry Healy, is already among around 2,000 people who have been given tickets to see Obama in Moneygall -- but Eneclann said the new cousins were even more closely related to the US leader. “As a result of the new findings, Dick Benn and Tom Donovan have been invited to meet the US president when he visits Moneygall next week,” said Eneclann, which is based at prestigious Trinity College, Dublin. Obama’s great-great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Falmouth Kearney, was a 19-year-old cobbler’s son when he emigrated from famine-ravaged Ireland in 1850. Kearney eventually settled in Ohio. But in newly uncovered links, it emerged that Kearney’s mother, Phoebe Donovan, was the daughter of Fulmoth Donovan and Mary Benn -- the ancestors of Dick Benn and Tom Donovan, and also of Obama. Digging even deeper, the researchers said Obama’s roots may come from continental Europe as the Benn family appear to have been immigrants from there, and that as late as the 1750s their name was Behn. “We think that the Benns may originally have been Flemish, Dutch or even French Huguenot, who settled in Ireland in the late seventeenth century,” said Eneclann’s research director Fiona Fitzsimons. As a result of waves of immigration, about 34mn people in the United States claim an Irish connection and many previous presidential hopefuls have used their “green” ancestry to attract the Irish-American vote.