Joe Biden talks of his English roots in Nottingham as he explores Irish ancestry
Joe Biden made a rare acknowledgement of his English roots on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to show he had not written out his ties to the UK.
Giving a speech at Ulster University on his whistle-stop tour of Belfast before heading to a three-day trip south of the border where he will explore his Irish heritage, the president joked that British friends had told him he was really English.
Mr Biden said that while vice-president, he had lived next door to the UK ambassador whom he did not name. He said that during the ambassador’s last trip before he came back to Washington to finish his term he brought back a present from the UK and suggested the president was English.
“He brought back a book with a photograph on the front of a somewhat stout British captain in his quarters with a bulldog sitting next to him,” Mr Biden said.
“His name was Captain George Biden and he used to always kid me and say you know Biden is English, you talk about the Irish, Biden is English. He told me that he went back and he had the Lord Admiralty check and my great-great-grandfather had written the rules of mutiny for the British Navy. I said at least that part’s consistent.”
Mr Biden also said that he had found out his middle name had a connection to Britain and Nottingham in the Midlands.
“But he used to always kid me when I talk about the Irish, he said ‘you are English, just remember that’. Then I found out the name Robinette — my middle name is Robinette — I thought all these years it was French. It must have been Huguenots because they came to Great Britain in the 1700s somewhere along the way, and they are all from Nottingham so I don’t know what the hell is going on here.”
While Mr Biden’s ancestors can be traced back to Sussex he has never visited the county but this week will retrace the footsteps of his Irish relatives.
His paternal third great-grandfather, William Biden, was born in England in 1789 and emigrated to the US where he settled in Maryland before he died in 1849.
According to Eddy Greenfield, a historian, he was born in Sussex and was christened at St John the Baptist’s Church in Westbourne on March 8 1789. William was the second child and son of James Biden,ofm Pagham, who was born in November 1767 and Ann Silverlock, born March 1766, who were married on May 16 1785.
Mr Greenfield has said that the link from Westbourne can be followed “across to Maryland and through the ascendancy to Joe”. He has said he believes his research is “as close to 100 per cent as you can get without DNA confirmation”.
Megan Smolenyak, an American genealogist, has also linked the president to William Biden after finding documents that connect him and other members of his family to Westbourne.
William, a stonemason, died aged 60 and was buried at Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore, a key city in Mr Biden’s family tree.
WIlliam Biden married Mary Elkins, and they had a son, Joseph J Biden, who was descended from the president’s great-grandfather George F Biden. His grandfather and father were also named Joseph and the president was born in 1942 in Pennsylvania.
