In 1929 a woman named Augusta Lynch de MacKinley of Buenos Aires was in correspondence with the Office of the Chief Herald in Ireland about ongoing research into the origins of her branch of the Lynch family.

The notes from this research, which are now in the National Library1, state that the man she described as the founder of the South American branch of the family was Patrick Linch, born in 1715, son of Patrick Linch and Ines (Agnes) Blake. The family home was Lydican (or Lydecan) in the County Galway parish of Claregalway. 

GO MS 817 (12) Draft Pedigree of Lynch of Lydecan. A later version of this pedigree in GO MS 812 (31) include a fourth generation, Walter and Patrick Lynch, sons of William (d 1758).

As this research was underway in Dublin, the man who would become Patrick Lynch’s most famous descendent was beginning his life in Rosario, Argentina.  Ernesto Raphael Guevara de la Serna, better known to the world as the revolutionary Ché Guevara, was born on 14 June 1928 to Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna.3

Five generations separate Ché and his Irish immigrant ancestor who settled in the area the estuary of the Río De La Planta, now Buenos Aires.   There Patrick Lynch and his children prospered. There were fortunes to be made as the settlement grew. Over the decades Lynch’s many descendants were central to the development of what became the Argentine Republic.  And the Lynch influence spread beyond Argentina. One descendant, Patricio Lynch (1825-1889) became Rear Admiral of the Chilean navy. 

You can read much more about this family’s history in an article in the IrishCentral web site at: http://bit.ly/3xZWeAd