Jackie O and the Mullagh connection

JACKIE Kennedy, wife of  John F Kennedy, had strong family connections with Shanadrum near Mullagh in West Clare.

Research has found that the former first lady was one-eighth French and half-Irish, with most of her ancestors coming from Shandrum, near Mullagh, in West Clare.

Genealogist Jim O’Callaghan has spent over a year studying the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis family tree and he told last weekend’s Sunday Times all eight of Jackie Kennedy’s great-great grandparents and two of her four great-grandparents were born in Ireland.

The genealogist conducted his research in Boston and New York.
The surnames of the four families on Jackie Kennedy’s mother’s side were Lee, Norton, Merritt and Curry.

The Merritts and Currys were originally from Clare. The family gravestone in New York’s Calvary cemetery says Jackie’s great-grandparents, Thomas Merritt and Maria Curry, were born in Clare.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was born in 1929 and died in 1994.

JFK’s last words on Irish soil
PRIOR to departing to England on June 29, 1963, President John F Kennedy made his last speech at Shannon Airport. The 12th Army Battalion formed a guard of honour at the airport before President Kennedy delivered his speech. The full text of his speech was as follows:
I want to express my thanks to the county council and this is where we all say goodbye.
I want to express our greatest thanks to the President of your country, your great President, to your Prime Minister, and to all the members of the government and especially to all the people of Ireland who have taken us in.
Ireland is an unusual place. What happened 500 or 1,000 years ago is yesterday, where we on the other side of the Atlantic 3,000 miles away, we are next door. While there may be those removed by two or three generations from Ireland, they may have left 100 years ago their people, and yet when I ask how many people may have relatives in America, nearly everybody holds up their hands.
So Ireland is a very special place. It has fulfilled in the past a very special role. It is in a very real sense the mother of a great many people, a great many millions of people and, in a sense, a great many nations. And what gives me the greatest satisfaction and pride, being of Irish descent, is the realisation that even today, this very small island still sends thousands, literally thousands, of its sons and daughters to the ends of the globe to carry on an historic task, which Ireland assumed 1,400 or 1,500 years ago.
So this has been really the high point of our trip. Last night, I sat next to one of the most extraordinary women, the wife of your President, who knows more about Ireland and Irish history. So I told her I was coming to Shanno, and she immediately quoted this poem and I wrote down the words because I thought they were so beautiful:
‘Tis it is the Shannon’s brightly glancing stream,
Brightly gleaming, silent in the morning beam,
Oh, the sight entrancing,
Thus returns from travels long,
Years of exile, years of pain,
To see old Shannon’s face again,
O’er the waters dancing.
Well, I am going to come back and see old Shannon’s face agai and I am taking, as I go back to America, all of you with me.
Thank you.

The president spoke at 1.15pm. In his opening remarks, he referred to the Clare County Council, whose members presented him with a gift of old Irish silver. Citation: John F Kennedy: “Remarks at Shannon Airport Upon Leaving for England”. Later that summer, Clare County Council received a letter of thanks, for their gift, from President Kennedy.