TV and radio presenter and DJ Devin ‘Dev’ Griffin was born on 23 December 1984 in Hackney, London. He is the youngest of four children and was raised by his mother, Maggie, a single parent of Irish heritage. His father, Rodney, is originally from Jamaica. As he explains at the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, “I don’t think I feel Irish or Jamaican… I want to dig deeper into my family history now. It might answer some of the questions that I’ve had for years. I would like to feel connected.” He’s particularly interested to investigate a rumour that someone in his family was involved in the Irish Civil War.
To start, Dev meets his mother, who tells him about emigrating to London from Ireland as a child, a time when landladies had “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” signs excluding tenants and she and her siblings had elocution lessons to get rid of their Irish accents to stop them from being bullied. She shows him pictures of her grandfather Francis Weafer and his brother Patrick.
To find out more, Dev heads to Dublin. He learns that he does have a family connection to the Irish Civil War – Patrick Weafer joined the Irish Volunteers, a pro-independence paramilitary force. In April 1916, Patrick fought in the Easter Rising, an armed uprising in Dublin against British rule. He was in the thick of the fighting, volunteering to take part in a dangerous attack on the City Hall and trying to get aid for a wounded comrade in the middle of the battle. The Easter Rising was crushed by the British. The leaders were executed, and Patrick Weafer was among those imprisoned, but the harsh response turned public opinion towards Irish independence.
Next, Dev wants to find out if his great grandfather was also involved in the fight for independence. He learns that Patrick was a bicycle messenger in the Irish Republican Army (not the same as the subsequent paramilitary organisations using the name IRA) in the 1919-21 Irish War of Independence, delivering secret intelligence, at risk of being imprisoned or shot by the British army if he was caught.
Dev next turns his attention to the Griffins, his maternal grandfather’s family. To find out more, he heads to Kilkee in County Clare, where he learns that his great grandfather James Griffin (who also used the Irish version of his name, Seamus Mór Ó Gríofa), was a member of the Gaelic League, an organisation campaigning to preserve and promote the Irish language and culture at a time when it seemed in danger of dying out. He was also a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood – an underground military organisation that paved the way for the Irish War of Independence – and a trustee of Coláiste Chomhraidhe, an Irish-language college.
Dev says he’s proud of his Irish ancestors: “They were ready to put their own lives at risk in order to preserve the culture, to see an independent Ireland.”
Next, Dev goes to Jamaica to find out more about his father’s side of the family. He meets his Aunt Viveen. She tells him that his father was born Rodney Riley, son of Martel and Linda Riley, but was raised by his aunt and uncle Nehemiah and Rose Brown because they had no children of their own. He goes to the local church to find out more about Martel’s parents, Joshua Riley and Annie Thompson. The church minutes show that in 1901, they were both excluded from the church for “fornication” – sex outside marriage. Just two days before, Annie gave birth to their first child, Alpheus. The couple went on to marry and Joshua became a deacon of the church.
Dev reflects on what he’s learned about his heritage: “I feel like I can really confidently say that I’m Irish and Jamaican now. Maybe for the first time ever, I truly belong somewhere.”
