Secretary of State claims descent from Irish soldier

THERE is no evidence that General Colin Powell ever danced the Siege of Ennis while growing up in the Irish stronghold of the Bronx in New York.

But the sixty-fifth American Secretary of State would be justified in telling President George W Bush as they arrive tonight for the EU-US summit at Dromoland Castle that his ancestors hailed from the surrounding Clare countryside.

For genealogists have traced his family tree back some eight generations to a former Dean of Kilfenora, Rev Charles Coote, who was one of the Cootes of Ash Hill in Kilmallock, Co Limerick. It is a remarkable story, touched by war and politics, a liaison in far-off days with a slave girl and the eventual rise of a brilliant soldier to become the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African-American Secretary of State in the United States.

The Cootes were powerful landowners in Ireland for some 300 years.

They gave their name to such places as Cootehill in Cavan and Mount Coote in Limerick, and provided Britain with top military leaders and Members of Parliament.

General Sir Eyre Coote (1760-1823), second son of the Dean of Kilfenora in Clare, went to Eton, fought in the American War of Independence and served in the West Indies.

He was also Governor of Jamaica for two years, from 1806 to 1808. While there, he fathered a child by a black slave girl, Sally, who was, according to the genealogists, General Colin Powell’s great-great-great-grandmother.

Mr Powell, who is now aged 67, acknowledged in his autobiography, My American Journey, that his people were originally slaves in the Government House in Jamaica and that one of them had a liaison with Sir Eyre Coote, from whom he claimed descent.

A professional soldier for 35 years, Mr Powell rose to the rank of a four-star General, oversaw 28 military and political crises, including Operation Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War, and advised four US presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush. He was born in New York City.