Official Genealogy Report Explodes Vance's 'Scots-Irish Hillbilly" Claim
A “trawl of genealogy records” has called into question Vice President JD Vance’s self-declared status as a “Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart,” the New York Times reports.
Vance, in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, declared, “To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.”
But, according to a report commissioned by a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) minister, Vance lacks “‘a conclusive family link’ to Northern Ireland.” The research was detailed in a “24-page dossier titled ‘The Family Footsteps of JD Vance,’” The Times reports.
As the Times notes, “Gordon Lyons, the Northern Ireland minister for communities, had been hoping to present a copy of the report personally to Vance over the St Patrick’s Day period in Washington DC.”
According to the Times, "as Scots-Irish, or Ulster-Scots, [Vance’s] family history would be tied directly to plantation-era Scots settlers whose descendants, generations after arrival in Ireland, set out for America.”
“Emails obtained via a freedom of information request show that in February Lyons’s office was advised that “it has not been possible to establish conclusive proof of a direct Vance link back to Ulster at this stage,” the report adds.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
