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Roots might help Palin see Ireland from Alaska

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

I knew that Sarah Palin, Republican nominee for vice president and governor of Alaska, had Irish ancestry, as does John McCain, and Democrats Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, reportedly both descend from Irish cobblers. But Palin lives on the northwestern corner of the country near Russia, while I focused on New England, specifically Vermont and its Ireland ties. It’s a long way from Vermont to Alaska, even farther than from Ireland to Vermont.
My story began in Roscommon near the River Shannon: there, tenant farmers waged a rent strike against the Crown for years and were evicted from their homes. In the worst months of Famine, the British government forced them to Liverpool and New York (see www.ballykilcline.com). In my book, with descendants’ help, I traced a cluster of the immigrants to Rutland as its railroad and marble industries boomed.
I recognized Palin’s mother’s name, Sheeran, from Roscommon records. Newfound evidence said that Palin’s ancestor likely came from a townland across a narrow road from Ballykilcline in Kilglass parish. Her ancestor plowed fields under the same distressed social and political conditions that confronted the Ballykilcline farmers.
Palin may not know her own story since her lineage, posted on the internet (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~battle/palin.htm), recently ended her Irish line in 1852 Vermont when her great-great-grandfather, Michael James Sheeran, was born. In contrast, that ancestry traced other forebears into the 1600s. I wondered where her Sheerans came from, though. Michael James’s Minnesota death record delivered additional detail: he was born on August 10, 1852, in West Rutland. Genealogists recently have updated her posted lineage and named his parents as Michael Sheeran and Maria Kline (that is, Cline).
Searches in Rutland’s 1850 and 1860 censuses did not identify any Sheerans. But in my databases of Rutland Roscommoners, developed for my book, was a Michael Sheiran (spelling was capricious then), who filed for citizenship on September 12, 1855 and stated that he was born in 1823 in “Nokall” (Knockhall), across a narrow road from Ballykilcline near Strokestown. And Cline is a local name incorporated in the name of Ballykilcline; immigrant Clines also went to Rutland. In my records, I found marble worker James Sheeran in West Rutland in 1857 when St. Bridget’s parish conducted a census. James shared a house with Patrick Farrell and Ellen Cline. Farrell’s naturalization filing listed him as a Roscommoner and Patrick Brislin, a character in my book, was Farrell’s witness. Roscommoners often formed tight-knit communities in the new world.
So the only two Sheeran men found in Rutland between 1852 and 1857 were linked to Kilglass. Palin’s ancestor bore both of their Christian names. Now we know that Michael is her ancestor and it seems likely that Michael and James were related. The updated lineage says that Michael and Maria Sheeran moved first to LaSalle County, Illinois, as did many of Rutland’s Kilglass immigrants during that decade of great mobility, and then to Minnesota. In 1850s Knockhall, one Sheeran remained; Griffith’s Valuation listed Bridget Sheeran.
A tide of people fled Roscommon in the years when the Sheerans emigrated. Many arrived through the quarantine station at Grosse Ile, Quebec, an inexpensive passage across the Atlantic and one favored by “assisting” landlords like Denis Mahon of Strokestown who cleared their overburdened, unproductive estates of tenants in the 1840s. Immigrants who survived the journey — in 1847 half of Mahon’s “assisted” tenants did not — often continued farther to Vermont. Kilglass lost more than 60 percent of its people during that decade. Mahon was gunned down in November, which caused an international uproar, poisoned British opinion against the Irish, roiled Roscommon, and brought a Coercion Act down on Ireland. A Ballykilcline man was suspected in Mahon’s death. Mahon’s former estate is now home to Ireland’s Famine Museum.
The fleeing emigrants sought to escape more than a calamity of nature. In Kilglass and Ballykilcline, they fought government oppression and an abusive economic system. In Rutland, the Sheerans and other Irish newcomers confronted an economy that sought to keep immigrants in their place as low-wage railroad and quarry workers in perpetual service to profits and managerial control. The stakes were high. The courts were complicit. The battles bitter. Quarry workers joined in labor actions and found themselves forced out of company housing by owners’ efforts to block paltry raises and shorter work days. The owners then pocketed enormous gains and replaced the Irish with newer immigrants from Canada.
Palin seemed to have a hole in her history ending in Vermont. The evidence now shows that her story extends to the contentious social and political battles in ravaged Kilglass deep within Famine Ireland. Parts of her story may even mirror today’s protracted economic, social, and political troubles and catastrophes affecting native peoples in many corners of the world. Would understanding her history make a difference to Palin?
Perhaps a visit to Strokestown’s Famine Museum would help the candidate to reclaim her mother’s roots and an Irish world view. Or, if she is too busy, she could read my book.
Mary Lee Dunn’s “Ballykilcline Rising: From Famine Ireland to Immigrant America” was published in July by the University of Massachusetts Press.

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