Back to Family Story outcomes, S22

When I signed up to take a class that required each student to take an AncestryDNA test, I was excited as to what I was going to uncover about myself. I wondered what I would learn about my family history, thrilled at the prospect of uncovering some ancestor from some distant country that no one in my family knew about. However, when I received my ethnicity results from Ancestry, I quickly realized that my hopes of uncovering a complex ethnicity would go unfulfilled. Why? Because Ancestry reaffirmed what I had always been told by my parents and grandparents: I am literally 100% Irish. No mystery, no fascinating revelation. 

My name is James Manus Sullivan. I get my name from my mother’s father, Manus James Clancy III. Manus got his name from his father, Manus Clancy II, who in turn got his name from his father. I have always felt extremely connected to my mother’s side of the family for this reason. My twin brother, John Joseph Sullivan is named after my father’s father, also named John Joseph Sullivan. My siblings and I were all raised Catholic, with my father always telling us (mostly tongue-in-cheek) to follow in that tradition and marry Irish Catholic women. If it ain’t broke, he would joke, why fix it?

Given this pervasive attitude of Irishness, I perhaps should not have been surprised when Ancestry confirmed my heritage. At first, I was a little dismayed – how was I going to produce an interesting research project when I only had one thing to talk about? – but as I started to fill out my family tree and get into the weeds of my family history, my attitude started to change. 

In 2021, just a little over a year ago, my grandfather, Manus Clancy passed away. Before he died, we had talked about his life, his family, and what it was like growing up in New York City during the Great Depression. And to be honest, I had a nagging feeling that I hadn’t remembered enough. That broke my heart a little bit; I felt like I had lost the chance to know more about my family and where I came from. In researching his side of the family, I found a new opportunity to learn. First, I learned what the name “Clancy” meant: “Son of the Red/Ruddy Warrior.” I also learned that the Clancy last name is really only common in the Western area of County Clare in Ireland, which absolutely checked out with the breakdown of my heritage provided by Ancestry. I also was able to find draft cards for Manus Clancy II and Manus Clancy Sr., from World War One and World War Two. I had grown up hearing stories about my great-grandfather, Manus Clancy II serving in the Pacific Theater, so finding these records made extremely proud to share his name.

So, while I was not able to make any massive discoveries about my heritage, not discover some incredibly impressive surprise ancestor, I did find that I found out exactly what I wanted to know. I found out about how my family moved from Ireland to New York, and what their experience was like in Brooklyn. And you know what? That was more than enough. I am proud to be Irish and a New Yorker, and I am impossibly proud of sharing the name Manus James.

Sources

Clancy coat of arms. IrishNation.com. Retrieved April 28, 2022, from https://www.irishsurnames.com/