Joe Biden to be presented with 200-year-old brick from his ancestral home in Ballina

Ballina Community Clean-up Group prepare for the visit of US president Joe Biden. Picture: John O'Grady

A 200-year-old brick from his ancestral home in Mayo will be presented to US president Joe Biden during his visit to Ballina on Friday.

The great, great, great-grandfather of President Biden, entrepreneur and ‘brickman’ Edward Blewitt, lived in a cottage at the rear of what is now Caffrey’s Art Gallery on Garden Street in the 1820s. 

Edward’s company provided 27,000 bricks for the construction of St Muredach’s Cathedral, from where his descendant will soon take to the stage as president of the United States of America. 

All that remains of the cottage today is the brick fireplace, but gallery owner Ernie Caffrey is making sure President Biden will carry a piece of his heritage back to his family in the US.

“I extracted a brick out of the fireplace, and I got a local plastic manufacturer to make a box for it,” Mr Caffrey told the Irish Examiner. 

“We got a quotation from the minutes of the Cathedral in 1828 and we inscribed that under the brick. We’ll present that to him on Friday. A piece of the old homestead,” he said.

US president Joe Biden at Carlingford Castle, Co Louth, on Wednesday.

Mr Caffrey, a former Fine Gael senator, was introduced by then taoiseach Enda Kenny to then vice-president Biden in 2016. 

“He was lovely. Very simple to talk to. Just a few words, there were thousands on the street. We had a word, talking about the senate in Ireland and the senate in America,” he said.

The unpredictable weather, including some high winds and driving rain, has not slowed the frenzied preparations in the north Mayo town in recent days. 

The stars and stripes are flapping across every street horizon. Joe Biden’s face adorns every shop window. Six men have been putting in 12-hour days since Tuesday power-hosing the chewing gum off the footpaths. 

“We’re making Ballina clean again,” joked Sprayline owner Daragh Mooney. 

Across the river Moy, construction workers battled violent gusts to erect a large stage in front of the cathedral from where the Coronas and the Chieftains will entertain up to 20,000 people expected to attend President Biden’s speech.

 “It’s not often you get any excitement around Ballina, never mind a president of the United States, said manager of Ward’s Pharmacy Paul King. 

"It’s a sleepy enough kind of a place in general so the excitement is palpable to say the least. There’s also a lot of craic about it and talk, from my own parents in their 70s and 80s to kids, everyone’s bought into it,” he added.

For owner of An Cupán Ceoil café Christina Forde, the presence of President Biden will lift the entire country, not just Ballina. 

“I hope I get to meet him. I hope he hears I’m looking for him to see me in Cupán Ceoil. Just being in his presence, the awe of say, one of the most powerful men in the world,” she said.

“I just hope that he gives faith back to the country and help us along, after the lockdown and his own country is up in a bit of a heap and we’re all in a heap here as well. I think he brings love. 

"There’ll be a lot of people that’ll be negative but I’m sure there’s more love than negativity and for me I will give all my love to him because I think he’s fab, just to be here. His family, the Blewitts, are beautiful salt of the earth people as well,” she added.

Has she noticed any secret service agents? 

“No, I haven’t but I’m looking for one for myself,” she laughed.