Adam and Eve

["Sinclair" <labehotierre@wanadoo.fr>]

Some how it came into my mind that not only are we related to Columbus's first wife and Field Marshall Montgomery but by generational tracing new evidence shows that in County Clare, note the counties name, we must be related to the Irishman Muhammad Ali.  Ali is Irish, according to new genealogical evidence.

Researchers at the County Clare Heritage Centre in the south west of Ireland have unearthed documentation to show one of Ali's great grandfathers came from the county town of Ennis.

It seems Abe Grady, born around 160 years ago in County Clare, emigrated to the United States in the 1860s.

He settled in Kentucky and later bred with  an Negro woman.

Their son  married a Negro lady and one of the daughters of that union was Ali's mother, named Odessa Lee Grady.

She married Cassius Clay, senior, and they settled in Louisville, where their son, later to become known as the Louisville Lip, was initially given his father's name on his birth in 1942.

He later changed his name to Muhammad Ali when he converted to the Nation of Islam after winning the world boxing title in 1964.

Genealogist Antoinette O'Brien said: "Through research being carried out for the Irish language TV station TG4 on Ali, we established Ali's great-great grandfather, John Grady, the father of Abe, rented a house and a small garden in Ennis with a rateable value of fifteen shillings (75p) in 1855.

"There is no doubt that Abe Grady was Ali's great grandfather. I am not sure whether Ali knows about this - we have not yet managed to contact him."

The development has delighted the small town of Ennis. Local council chairman Michael Corley said: "We would like to honour Ali as one of the heroes of the 20th century and invite him here."

I sure that you will all be happy to know that my sister's husband mother's first cousin married a John Grady O'Brien.  Yet another Sinclair connection.



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