Ernie Caffrey has a gift waiting for President Joe Biden when he visits his ancestral hometown of Ballina, Co. Mayo: A brick from the home where the Blewitts lived before they left famine-ravaged Ireland for the U.S.
Caffrey’s fine art gallery stands on the spot in Garden Street where Edward Blewitt lived with his wife and eight children — in what is now known as Biden’s ancestral home.
All that remains is part of a wall and an old hearth in the backyard of the gallery.
‘I was up a ladder and down the other side to chip out these bricks,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘It took me hours.’
But it is a physical connection between an American president and the land of his forefathers, said Caffrey.
Ernie Caffrey wants to present President Joe Biden with a brick from the wall of his ancestral Blewitt home in Ballina, Co. Mayo, when the president visits at the end of this week
Biden’s maternal line emigrated from Ireland during the Great Famine. The Blewitts left Co. Mayo and…
