Since American genealogy often includes Irish ancestry, because we supposedly all have "a wee bit" of Irish in us, I asked at the Saint Patty's dinner I attended who actually had some Irish.
As it turned out, only one person in 25 there had some. He was half Irish and Catholic and half English Protestant. We elected the one "Irishman" there to do a jig for us. He camped it but said actually he was first an American and second an Angeleno (from Los Angeles).
Still, everyone enthusiastically ate their corned beef and cabbage, which included some perfectly uniformly round potatoes and perfectly uniformly sized baby carrots; I suspect these days big potatoes and carrots are put into machines to create these shapes and sizes.
How attached to ethnicity any American is is up to debate but I generally see that immigrant Americans define themselves by the country or ethnicity they left behind, first generation refers to this also, but by the second or third generation memories of old country and old ways have diminished significantly. Recipes and eating habits are brought forward.
As for Irish-American genealogy, the practice follows the usual paths until one can jump across the ocean and deal with the archives of Europe, in particular church records. Common surnames confound as usual.
I was able to tell one Native American person at the dinner about the "grass eaters," the Irish starving because of the Potato famine who ate grass until their mouth area was tinted green. I told about the exploitation Irish immigrants experienced on the ships where conditions could be filthy. The immigrants were expected to scrub the ship and clean up before coming into port. Many of the "grass eaters" were skeletal when they boarded and some died before they got to America. From the potato famine immigration generation, came the ancestors of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
If you're doing Irish-American genealogy, you may go back before steamships. I feel that finding Naturalization papers should come before finding ship information as it should mention the name of the ship and possibly place of birth or place left in Ireland. This sometimes helps when dealing with common surnames. Be aware that some Irish left their homes and first found work closer to ports in order to buy their tickets - or eat enough to be healthy when they boarded. The place they lived temporarily may not be their place of origin but is listed on the ship manifest. Sometimes a World War I draft registration can be a better informational source for villages of birth or origin.
C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy
This post has been edited with more information given July 2019.
