How Taylor Swift and a host of famous faces have close links with Northern Ireland (2024)

But there are a number of other famous faces from the world of music, film and even international politics who also have close familial ties to Northern Ireland — who you might not have realised.

Earlier this week, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum discovered that Taylor’s link to Northern Ireland started 172 years ago, on June 11, 1836, when her great-great-great grandparents Susan Davis and Francis Gwynn — both 21 — emigrated from Ireland to the USA, aboard the ship Amy sailing from Londonderry.

Three years after their two-month-long voyage culminated in the ship docking in Philadelphia on August 20, the couple married and had six children named Ann, John, William, Francis, Joseph, and Mary — Taylor Swift’s great-great-grandmother.

As Taylor Swift’s ancestral ties allude to, more than 10million Irish people left these shores for a life elsewhere.

Another historic love story also has links to another musical giant currently dominating the charts — Ed Sheeran.

In 2017, after the release of his Divide album, Ed shared some family history with his fans through the song Nancy Mulligan — named after his late grandmother.

The song tells the story of Anne Mary, as she was also known, a Catholic nurse from Gorey in Co Wexford, and William Sheeran, a Protestant from Belfast, and how they fell in love during the Second World War and married on the Wexford border, before moving to London where Ed’s father — John — was raised.

In the lyrics of Nancy Mulligan, Sheeran says: “You know Nancy, I adore ya; from a farm boy born near Belfast town; I never worried about the king and crown; ‘cause I found my heart upon the southern ground; there’s no difference, I assure ya.”

Two of the singles on the album also feature Belfast-based trad band Beoga, another interesting link to the region, and his hit single Galway Girl, of the same album, gives a mention to Antrim town Carrickfergus.

In 2014, singer-songwriter Katie Melua received an honorary degree from Queen’s University Belfast.

What many don’t know is that the Wonderful Life singer was actually raised in Northern Ireland after her family emigrated from the Georgian city of Kutaisi when she was nine years old in the aftermath of the Georgian Civil War.

Her father worked as a heart surgeon at Royal Victoria Hospital and the family lived in Belfast near the Falls Road until Katie was 14.

She told Sunday Life in a previous interview how growing up here inspired her creativity.

“When I was a kid in Belfast one of the most transformative books I read was Under The Hawthorn Tree,” she said.

“It was one of those books that made me feel so at one with the Irish. It’s extraordinary the literary works that have come out of the country.

“The talent that has come out of Northern Ireland is extraordinary,” she said.

“What can I add to it? I think it must be something to do with the Troubles that made people want to write and I think that’s something that’s happening now.”

Earlier this year, none other than grunge icon and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was revealed to have links to the quiet town of Carrickmore in Co Tyrone.

Samuel Cobane was born on May 23, 1823 and he grew up in the townland of Dunmisk. He and his wife Letitia married in St Columbkille Church in 1854 and six of their children were born in Carrickmore.

In 1875 the family left Ireland and sailed to Ontario, Canada.

Like many other Irish people emigrating to North America at the time, their names were changed or were misspelled on official documentation and the Cobanes became Cobains.

Their descendants would eventually move to Washington State and the family line continued with Kurt Cobain who was born on February 20, 1967 in Aberdeen, Washington, going on to become a famous musician.

Earlier this year, in April, a plaque was erected at the Patrician Hall of St Columbkille’s Church in Carrickmore to mark Cobain’s Irish roots.

Outside of the world of music, Tyrone has also had some other notable descendants including the first man on the moon — Neil Armstrong — whose family hail from Clogher as well as Irvinestown in Fermanagh.

Jurassic Park and Peaky Blinders star Sam Neill also hails from mid-Ulster, after he was born in Omagh before his family moved to Tyrella in Co Down where his dad was an officer in the Royal Irish Fusiliers based at nearby Ballykinlar.

When he was just seven his family moved to Christchurch in New Zealand.

Last year, Sam revealed in his book Did I Ever Tell You This? How, when he was growing up in Northern Ireland, he found watching Orange marches “weirdly frightening”.

“It was all loud drums and sweaty florid faces, orange sashes and bowler hats, and an alarming sense of common purpose that I’d never seen before,” he recalls.

Another Northern Irish-born TV star includes celebrity survivalist Bear Grylls who was born in Donaghadee on June 7, 1974 and has some surprising links to politics here.

Grylls, who shot to fame with his adventure series Man Vs Wild, which ran from 2006 to 2011, and has a string of hit survival shows, and is reported to come from an “upper-crust” Conservative and unionist background.

His father was Tory Sir Michael Grylls, a one-time MP for Surbiton.

His mother was Sarah Ford, later Lady Sarah Grylls, the daughter of Ulster Unionist MP for North Down Patricia Ford.

Mrs Ford was the first female MP from Northern Ireland, winning the North Down constituency seat in a by-election caused by the death of her father — Sir Walter Smiles — in the Princess Victoria ferry tragedy in 1953.

She was also the first female representing an Irish constituency to take her seat in the House of Commons.

Bear has also previously thanked his dad for his love of fishing and angling sharing fond memories around North Down during his childhood.

“I used to go fishing with my dad a lot,” he recalled. “With freshly caught trout, we’d put a knife straight down the spine, flip it over, go under the skin and then pan-fry it. Beautiful.”

TV presenter and former Weakest Link host Anne Robinson has a surprising link to this part of the country as well.

Her mother, Anne Josephine (née Wilson), was from Co Fermanagh.

Former US president Bill Clinton — a well-known advocate for the Good Friday Agreement — also has links to the southwest.

He appears to be a relative of Lucas Cassidy, who left Co Fermanagh for America around 1750.

Aside from Mr Clinton and current US president Joe Biden boasting his Irish roots from the likes of Co Louth and Co Mayo, other White House residents have also hailed from this island in generations past.

Famous Republican president Richard Millhouse Nixon previously revealed connections on both sides of his family with his ancestors leaving Co Antrim for America around the year 1753, while the Millhouse’s came from Carrickfergus and Ballymoney, also in Co Antrim.

Father and son George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush have previously pointed to having links to both Co Antrim and Co Down.

William Gault, an ancestor on George Snr’s mother’s side was most likely born near Cullybackey in Co Antrim, while another forebear is believed to have come from Rathfriland in Co Down.

William Gault along with his wife Margaret, emigrated and became settlers in Tennessee by 1796, the year that Tennessee became a state.

Some two centuries later two of their descendants achieved the unique feat of being the only father and son to serve as US Presidents.