President Obama’s eighth cousin from Ireland, Henry Healy, is in the United States to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with the president, the New York Times reports.
Healy is a bookkeeper who lives in Moneygall, a hamlet of 350 people in County Offaly in Central Ireland. Obama and Healy’s common ancestor is Obama’s great-great-great grandfather, Fulmouth Kearney, a shoemaker’s son from Moneygall, who sailed for New York at the age of 19.
Obama has taken to calling his Irish cousin “Henry VIII.”
“When he walked into his ancestral home and pounded his foot on the wooden floor, you could see he really became emotional,†Healy told the NYT, referring to a trip Obama made to Ireland in 2007
Read more at the New York Times.