Report: Obama's Irish Roots Unearthed

Maybe he should spell it O'Bama.

Records unearthed in Ireland reveal that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama can trace his ancestry back to a shoemaker in a small Irish village, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Click here to read the Chicago Sun-Times story.

Obama's campaign had no comment Thursday about the report, but Chicago Alderman Ed Burke told the newspaper he wasn't surprised.

"I could tell from the very first time I saw him — he's got such a way with words," Burke said.

A Church of Ireland rector scoured files from the church dating to the late 1700s, and confirmed that Obama descended from Moneygall, County Offaly, the newspaper reported. The village today holds little more than a couple of pubs, shops and a Roman Catholic church.

Canon Stephen Neill, from a nearby town, began delving into Obama's past after a U.S. genealogist told him about the possible connection, the newspaper reported.

"I would be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this is categorical evidence of Mr. Obama's link to this part of the world," the rector said.

It was initially believed the would-be president's great-great-great-grandfather Fulmuth Kearney was the only one of his family to have sailed from Ireland to New York at age 19 in 1850. But the newly uncovered records show other family members had in fact emigrated to America since the 1790s. They also reveal that Fulmuth's father, Joseph, was a shoemaker — a wealthy skilled trade at the time, the newspaper reported.

"They would have been among the upper echelons of society back then," said Neill.

Obama was born in Hawaii to a black man from Kenya and a white woman — with Irish links — from Kansas.

"I've got pieces of everybody in me," he has been quoted as saying.

The Sun-Times published also published a breakdown of Obama's ancestry, which, according to the newspaper, included: American Indian, Irish, Kenyan, English/Pilgrim and Scottish.

The Press Association of Ireland, the Chicago Sun-Times, the London Daily Mail and Sunday Times of London contributed to this report.