Biden's ancestral Irish home celebrates, looks forward to reunion

FILE PHOTO: Laurita Blewitt, who is a cousin of Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden, poses in front of a Biden mural erected for the U.S. elections in the ancestral home of the Biden's in Ballina, Ireland, October 28, 2020. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo

BALLINA, Ireland (Reuters) - COVID-19 restrictions may have shut the pubs in the western Irish town of Ballina but that did not stop Joe Biden's ancestral home from celebrating his presidential election victory on Saturday.

Biden's great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt grew up in the old market town, the birthplace of Mary Robinson, Ireland's first female president. Blewitt emigrated after the Irish potato famine of the 1840s to Biden's birthplace of Scranton, Pennsylvania, a sister city of Ballina.