LONDON -- British genealogists who traced Ronald Reagan's roots to the tiny Irish village of Ballyporeen have now discovered Scottish ancestry on his mother's side that includes a radical left-wing politician and a moonshiner.
The genealogical firm Burke's Peerage traced the family of Reagan's mother, Nellie Clyde Wilson, back five generations to the Scottish village of Paisley where Reagan's great-great-grandfather was a businessman obsessed about fighting the evils of child labor, Burke's said Friday.
The great-great-grandfather, Claud Wilson, was a weaver 'who used the latest machinery in order to do away with child labor,' Burke's said. He was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, in 1786.
'The evil of child labor was an obsession of his,' said Harold Brooks-Baker, Burke's publishing director.
'He was also a radical politician, a left-winger,' Brooks-Baker said.
One of Claude Wilson's sons, Reagan's great-grandfather John Wilson, married into the Blue family, linking Reagan with a die-hard whiskey still-keeper, Johnny Blue.
'Johnny Blue was the last illicit whiskey distiller in the area of Scotland where the family lived,' Brooks-Baker said.
Other Blues were rather more respectable -- millers and prosperous farmers at the town of Killean.
The detective work was done at 'record' speed after Reagan asked Burke's, who had already traced his father's line to Ballyporeen in County Tipperary, to hunt down his mother's lineage, Brooks-Baker said. Reagan made a pilgrimage to his Irish ancestor's home last Sunday, as part of his 10-day European trip.
The hunt was led by Burke's senior genelogist, Hugh Peskett, often referred to in Britain as the 'Sherlock Holmes of the genealogical world.' In an all out effort to get to Reagan's roots before he returned to the United States at the end of the London economic summit Saturday, Peskett employed a staff of 30.
'We traced five generations in 48 hours -- a record which I don't think anyone would try to break,' Brooks-Baker said.
Claude Wilson married in Paisley in 1807. He moved to London, then to Nova Scotia in Canada, and then to Lowell, Mass. Reagan's great-grandfather John Wilson moved to Fairhaven, Ill., where he farmed.
'Like the Irish side of Reagan's family, the Scottish side were all very well educated, mainly self-educated. They were extremely able people,' Brookes-Baker said.
Burke's tracked down the closest living relative of Reagan on the east side of the Atlantic -- a fourth cousin, Miss Flora Blue, who lives in Carradale, Scotland, near Edinburgh.
The genealogy chart was delivered to the American ambassador's residence Friday night, where it was to be handed over to the president.
