Biden’s Ireland visit: How 27,000 cathedral bricks helped send Biden’s ancestors to US
When Joe Biden’s great-great-grandfather sailed from Ireland to America with his family, he did so with money earned from his brick business.
And new research in Ballina, Co. Mayo, has revealed that 27,000 Edward Blewitt bricks form the pillars of St. Muredach’s Cathedral where President Biden will deliver a public address this Friday during his four-day visit to Ireland.
The city buzzed at the thought of a presidential visit to the place where his ancestors once lived.
Ernie Caffrey, whose store is on the site of the old Blewitt house, said he hopes to share the new research with the president.
“He’s going to speak outside the cathedral where the bricks of his ancestors still hold up the roof,” he told DailyMail.com, amazed at the extraordinary connection.
St Muredach’s Cathedral, where bricks sold by Edward Blewit in 1828 were used in the peasant pillars, according to recent research linking President Biden to the building
Ernie Caffrey, whose shop is on the site of the old Blewitt house, teamed up with two historians to study cathedral documents to make the connection to the president
Not only do the stones form the pillars of Ballina Cathedral, but they also formed the basis of the Blewitt family’s fortune, enabling them to sail to a new life in America.
While many emigrants sailed individually and sent money back to transfer relatives one by one, in 1851 Edward Blewitt was able to afford tickets for his wife Mary and their eight children to sail together on the SS Excelsior.
It provided them with an escape route from one of the areas hardest hit by the Irish potato famine.
Caffrey said there have long been rumors that the stones may be related to Biden.
But he and two historians, Terry Reilly and Brendan Walsh, dug through church records to find the details.
“We have the cathedral’s records from that time showing the payment for the stones. He got £21 and 12 shillings for 27,000 bricks,” he said, which equates to about £20,000 ($25,000).
The minutes show that the deal was made in 1828, shortly after construction began.
They stand in the rogue of the great cathedral within 12 thick, round pillars that support the massive double-height structure.
Details of the transaction were published in a 1985 history by Rev. E. MacHale, but no one at the time would have given much thought to the name Blewitt, spelled Bluit here.
But the family bond will come full circle next Friday, when Biden will deliver a speech with the cathedral as a spectacular backdrop on the last day of his visit.
But right now you need to know they are there. The pillars are covered with plaster.
That could change by the time Biden arrives next week.
Fri. Ballina pastor Aidan O’Doyle said plans are underway to remove some of the plaster so the president can see his great-great-grandfather’s contribution.
“What we’ll try to do between now and next Friday is drill in without bringing the place down so we can get back into the rock,” he said.
Work will also begin next week on the construction of a stage outside the cathedral, next to the River Moy, for the speech, one of the major set pieces of the visit.
The bricks are still in place, keeping the roof over the farmer exposed, but covered in plaster
Fri. Ballina pastor Aidan O’Doyle said plans are now underway to remove some of the plaster so the president can see his great-great-grandfather’s contribution.
Not much remains of the old Blewitt house, just part of a wall and a stocked fireplace. Caffrey has decorated it with flags and red, white and blue flowers in case of a VIP visit
The discovery, together with the fact that some of Edward Blewitt’s daughters were baptized in the cathedral, makes the location all the more appropriate.
“The fact that the cathedral will be the setting and that his ancestors were involved in its construction and that some of his earliest ancestors who went to the United States were baptized here, that’s a big deal to him,” O said. Doyle.
And then the fact that he’s religious. His faith is important to him and it’s one of the things his mother brought, which makes it all the more exciting.’
Biden’s mother, Jean Finnegan, traces her ancestral line back to two Irish families – the Blewitts of Ballina and the Finnegans of Co. Louth, another stop on his visit next week.
The cathedral is not the only place where the Blewitt stones can be seen. An old wall and brick fireplace still stand at the back of what is now Caffrey’s Gallery, a shop selling art from all over Ireland.
Biden arrived in County Mayo in 2016 on his last official visit to Ireland. The then Vice President spent six days in the country visiting Dublin, Mayo and Louth
Joe Blewitt and his wife Deirdre drink champagne under a mural of their third cousin Joe Biden as locals celebrate Biden’s election in the 2020 County Mayo town of Ballina
Caffrey, a former tax collector who founded Co. Mayo in the Irish Senate said the construction was unusual. Most fireplaces at the time would have been made of stone.
“But he had plenty of stones,” he said with a chuckle.
The fireplace is now in the courtyard of his shop and is marked with a Stars and Stripes flag and an Irish tricolor. Red, white, and blue pansies are planted out front, and another Stars and Stripes flies overhead.
“We hung it today,” Caffrey said.
He hopes Biden gets to visit the old Blewitt house, but that’s in the lap of the gods — or more likely the US Secret Service.
“There are so many factors, the Secret Service and other agencies, programs put in place … so you don’t know,” he said. ‘You hope for the best.