Kamala Harris' family tree tells a tale of migration and education
5-6 minute read
By Daisy Goddard | September 20, 2024
From Jamaica to southern India, Kamala Harris' roots span the globe. These are the stories of her ancestors.
Harris was announced as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election in August 2024, taking over the role from Joe Biden, who became president in January 2021.
This thrust Vice President Kamala Harris into the spotlight of the media, along with her husband Doug Emhoff and step-children Cole Emhoff and Ella Emhoff.
Kamala Harris: her legal career and blended family
Kamala Harris has a background in law - she began her career working at the Alameda's District Attorney (DA)'s office, rising the ranks to become the District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003. She became attorney general of California in 2010 - a post to which she was re-elected four years later.
Kamala Harris married entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2014 and is a stepmother to Doug's children Cole and Ella.
Kamala Harris with Joe Biden.
As the first woman to hold these prominent positions, Kamala Harris is no stranger to forging new paths. Will we find a precedent for this in her family tree? If she inherited aspects of her character from her ancestors, we may expect to find career women and public servants in her family history...
A little digging revealed some fascinating figures in Kamala’s family. Here's everything our research uncovered.
Kamala Harris' early life
Kamala Devi Harris was born on 20 October 1964, in Oakland, California. She is a second-generation immigrant, as her father Donald J. Harris was born in Browns’ Town, Jamaica, while her mother Shyamala Gopalan was from Tamil Nadu in India.
Tamil Nadu, 1961. Image credit: Kazimierz Nowicki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Kamala’s parents met at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962, and were married just a year later. Shyamala made her name as a biomedical scientist, specialising in the treatment of breast cancer. But she isn’t the only academic in Kamala’s family – Donald is an economist who taught at Stanford University.
Kamala has one sister, Maya Harris, born in 1966. After living in various Midwest towns as well as California, Kamala grew up in Montreal, Canada from the age of 12.
Kamala's Indian ancestors
Our digging into Kamala Harris' family tree began on Kamala's maternal side.
Kamala Harris' mother Shyamala Gopalan was born on 7 December 1938, in Chennai, India (known then as British-occupied Madras). Madras was made the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu with India's independence in 1947. Located on the Bay of Bengal, it remains one of the country's most populated cities.
P.V and Rajam Gopalan
Shyamala was born to mother Rajam and father Painganadu Venkataraman (P.V) Gopalan. Their family were part of the Tamil Brahmin ethnoreligious group.
Map of Madras, 1909.
Born in Madras in 1911, Kamala Harris' maternal grandfather P.V Gopalan was a civil servant who served in the Government of India and the Government of Zambia.
He held several key roles in the civil service, including advising Kenneth Kaunda (the President of Zambia) and working as Secretary to the Government of India in the 1960s. During the British occupation of India, he also worked with the Imperial Secretariat Service.
P.V. and Rajam had an arranged marriage. Due to P.V.'s work, their family moved between Madras, New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta throughout Shyamala's childhood.
Kamala Harris has paid tribute to her mother Shyamala Gopalan, as well as her maternal grandfather, throughout her political career.
Jamaican family on Kamala Harris' paternal side
The paternal branches of Kamala's tree contain ancestors from another corner of the globe. A little digging into Kamala's Jamaican paternal line revealed some powerful stories of migration and close kinship.
Shopkeeper Miss Chrishy
Donald J. Harris was born to parents Beryl Christie Finnegan and Oscar Joseph Harris on 23 August 1938. He was born in Brown's Town, St. Ann parish - a small market town in an otherwise agricultural region of Jamaica.
Donald left Jamaica in the late 1950s, studying economics in London and then California (where he met Kamala's mother Shymala). Despite building a life in the United States, Donald has retained his Jamaican roots, crediting both of his grandmothers for having 'the strongest influence on [his] early upbringing' in an article in Jamaica Global.
Dry Harbour, St. Ann's, Jamaica.
Donald's father was Oscar Joseph Harris, born in St. Ann Parish in 1914. His parents (Kamala's great-grandparents) were Joseph Alexander (1871-1939) and Christiana Brown (1881-1951), known to Donald as 'Miss Chrishy'. Joseph died on 11 August 1939 (aged 65) and is today buried at Saint Mark's Anglican Church in Brown's Town.
Christiana was a shopkeeper who owned a dry goods store on Brown's Town's main street. She and Joseph had eight children.
Christiana Brown. Image credit: Donald J. Harris via Jamaica Online.
As both the head of a bustling family and a business owner in her own right, Miss Chrishy was a strong woman like her great-granddaughter Kamala Harris.
The legacy of Miss Iris
Donald J. Harris' maternal grandmother was also a key part of his Jamaican upbringing. Donald's mother Beryl was born to Patrick A. Finegan and Orah Allen, known as 'Miss Iris' (1888-1981). As their marriage record reveals, the couple had married on 1 January 1908, when they were aged 25 and 19, respectively.
Patrick and Iris' marriage record, 1908.
Like Miss Chrishy, Iris was also a mother of eight. She was a devoted Christian and ran a cane farm in St. Ann, and Donald remembers her as a 'tough farming woman'.
Through Kamala's father Donald J. Harris, both Christiana and Iris' stories have shaped the person that Kamala Harris is today.
Irish roots?...
Our research into Kamala Harris' family history revealed something unexpected. Like her Democratic Party predecessor Joe Biden, Kamala may have Irish roots. Fascinatingly, both Harris and Biden are the descendants of a Finegan.
Kamala's paternal great-grandfather was Patrick Alhanasous Finegan. We can learn from his 1908 marriage record that he was born around 1883.
We found his birth record within our Jamaica Births & Baptisms set. It reveals that Patrick was born on 9 January 1882, in Alexandria, St Ann.
From this record, we can discover that Patrick’s parents were Patrick Finegan and Mary Watson. The presence of this Irish surname suggests that generations back, Kamala Harris has Irish ancestors.
Kamala’s 2x great-grandparents Patrick and Mary may have been a part of the Irish immigration to Jamaica that took place from the 1600s onwards. Beginning in the early 17th century, Irish workers (many of whom were displaced Catholics) found employment on the island as sailors, merchants and servants.
Jamaica’s governor Robert Hunter described the status of Jamaica’s Irish immigrants in 1731:
"Servants and people of lower rank on the island chiefly consist of Irish Papists."
By the mid-19th century, Irish names like Walsh, O’Connor and O’Hara (and, indeed, Finegan) were prominent in Jamaica.
Through the Finegan line, Kamala Harris is descended from Irish immigrants in Jamaica. Her ancestors may have worked as servants or sailors in the 17th and 18th centuries, eventually settling in Brown’s Town in the St. Ann parish.
What will you discover?
From headstrong women to highly educated civil servants, Kamala Harris has a host of interesting ancestors within her family tree.
We've delved into other political family trees on the Findmypast blog - discover the genealogy of Joe Biden, Donald Trump and more today.
Don't leave the discoveries to the celebrities - there are also surprising stories to be uncovered within your very own family history. When you start your family tree with Findmypast, you never know what you might discover.
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