Well, that didn’t take long.
Just days after the German-Swedish Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota became the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential candidate, the nation’s roots sleuths said, “Hold on a minute! He’s Irish, too!”
The Echo’s man Jim McNiff was among those who quickly found that the governor’s great-grandmother, the former Laura Sullivan, was the daughter of parents from County Wexford.
On New Year’s Eve, 1988, when the 24-year-old Tim Walz was studying at Chadron State College, Nebraska, his grandfather Raymond A. Walz died in Burt, Neb. It was summertime 70 years earlier, when the almost 14-year-old Raymond’s own grandfather died. The Irish immigrant James Sullivan was lauded upon his June 1918 death, in an appreciation headlined “The Passing of a Pioneer,” as one of “the grandest characters,” a man “who was always ready to help a neighbor and to him a neighbor meant every human being without exception.”
Those Wexford roots have drawn media attention to the most famous U.S. connection to the county and a presidential visit to a farm in Dunganstown in 1963. But in fact James Sullivan’s wife, the former Anna Lacy, who also came from County Wexford as a young person, was said to have been a first cousin of John Redmond, another prominent son of Wexford and the leader of the Irish nationalists at Westminster from 1900 through 1918. This was mentioned in Lacy family obituaries, but descendants, according to Jim McNiff, have been unsuccessful over a number of years in their efforts to verify the link.
When Anna died back in 1901, her obituary said she and James had married in Madison, Wis., and “came overland to Waukapona settlement, east of this city [Hartington],” and added about the Irish-born couple: “They were among the earliest settlers and were well-known.” Her only daughter Laura was listed as Mrs. John Walz, and described along with the three Sullivan sons as “all prominent Cedar county people.”
Raymond Walz, the son of Laura and John Walz, was living in Cedar, Neb., in 1930, according to the census; he was married and his occupation was “manager." His son James had been born in late 1929. In 1940, Raymond and his family were living in Plainview, Pierce, Neb. James Walz, a teacher, school superintendent and Korean War veteran, died in January 1984 of lung cancer, when his son, the future governor of Minnesota, was 19.
