Northern Ireland

Meghan Markle can trace her Irish roots back to Belfast woman Mary McCue

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visiting the Crown Bar in Belfast in March. Picture by Gareth Fuller, Press Association
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visiting the Crown Bar in Belfast in March. Picture by Gareth Fuller, Press Association Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visiting the Crown Bar in Belfast in March. Picture by Gareth Fuller, Press Association

MEGHAN Markle is descended from a young Belfast woman who married an English soldier in Dublin after an apparently `whirlwind' romance more than 150-years ago.

Genealogists discovered the link while compiling a family tree for the Duchess of Sussex to present during her recent visit to Ireland.

It had been thought that Mary McCue had been born in Co Galway, due to different spellings of her name.

However, according to the Sunday Independent, a formal search of records has established she was born "in the Belfast region".

Her father, Francis McCue, is listed as a farmer on the marriage register in St Mary's Church of Ireland in Donnybrook Dublin, when she wed Thomas Bird.

Her groom's 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment of Foot, had only recently returned to India after 10 years, arriving in Dublin in August 1859.

Meghan Markle visited the Crown Bar in Belfast earlier this year. Picture by Gareth Fuller, Press Association
Meghan Markle visited the Crown Bar in Belfast earlier this year. Picture by Gareth Fuller, Press Association Meghan Markle visited the Crown Bar in Belfast earlier this year. Picture by Gareth Fuller, Press Association

The couple married on January 23 1860, in what genealogist Fiona Fitzsimons described as a "whirlwind romance".

They went on to have "at least two children", Mary - Meghan's great-great-grandmother - and Harriett, who travelled with their parents when the regiment moved to Canada.

Thomas died following the journey and his widow married another solider in the regiment and settled with him in Canada where he took up farming before moving to New Hampshire in the US, where the younger Mary married Charles Merrill.

Her mother succumbed to pneumonia on August 1885, aged in her mid-50s.

The original work to trace the duchess's ancestor was complicated by Harriett Bird listing her mother's surname as McCague on census formes, with a woman of that name traced to Galway.

Meghan Markle during a walkabout in Belfast earlier this year. Picture by Joe Giddens, Press Association
Meghan Markle during a walkabout in Belfast earlier this year. Picture by Joe Giddens, Press Association Meghan Markle during a walkabout in Belfast earlier this year. Picture by Joe Giddens, Press Association