Dallas actor visits Mayo: ‘It seems just about everybody around here is a Duffy’

Southfork, Texas met Skeheen, Co Mayo on Thursday when Patrick Duffy, a star of the US soap opera Dallas, visited a secluded west of Ireland village to meet some long-lost cousins.

Duffy, who played Bobby Ewing in the series, seemed bemused by the number of people with the surname who turned out to greet him when he visited Kilmovee, his ancestral parish.

“It seems that just about everybody around here carries the surname Duffy,” he said as a crowd gathered around him and his partner, Linda Purl.

It was left to scientist and biotechnologist Dr Tyrone Bowes, who firmly established the actor’s Irish ancestry, to later explain to him that in centuries past a large number of Duffys had migrated to east Mayo from Ulster. In Griffith’s 1853 valuation lists for the parish of Kilmovee, no fewer than 70 property owners named Duffy were recorded.

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Duffy and Purl visited a long-closed graveyard where generations of Duffys were buried as well as a stone fort at Kilcashel. But their declared highlight was the house in Skeheen – renovated to slate from thatch in the 1960s – from which Duffy’s great grandfather, Terence Duffy, emigrated to the US in search of a better life in the 1800s.

At Kilmovee Community Centre, a homely meal was prepared for the visitors which included boxty, bacon and cabbage, and buns.

Parish priest Fr Joseph Gavigan said the actor’s visit had boosted the spirit of the community.

“Patrick Duffy’s ancestors left Ireland in difficult times. Their success as emigrants is one of the positive stories about the exodus from Ireland in the 19th century,” he said.

Duffy’s trip ended with a visit to the local pub in Kilmovee where the actor raised a glass to his newly discovered cousins. The bar is owned, unsurprisingly, by a family of Duffys.