Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
21. George W. Bush (1946-)
> Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
> Party: Republican
> Term: 2001-09 (43rd president)
Besides the aforementioned Irish connection to the Bush family, the younger Bush is descended from Dermot MacMurrough, the King of Leinster, which is a province on the east coast of Ireland. He is also distantly related to Erskine Hamilton Childers, a former president of Ireland, whose father was executed during the Irish Civil War in 1922. Bush visited Ireland in 2004 and advocated for the peace initiative in Northern Ireland. George W. Bush’s terms were dominated by the war on terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Source: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images
22. Barack Obama (1961–)
> Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii
> Party: Democrat
> Term: 2009-17 (44th president)
Obama traces his Irish roots through his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. One of the 44th president’s great-great-great grandfathers was from the village of Moneygall in County Offaly and emigrated to the United States in 1850. Obama traveled to Ireland in 2011 and famously joked that he came to find the apostrophe missing from his last name.
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