DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irish town that was once home to an ancestor of Barack Obama is planning a US election night party and hoping the Democratic hopeful will sweep into the White House, its local clergyman said Monday. Two "Welcome to Obama Country" billboards have gone up at either side of Moneygall, a town of 250 in County Offaly that hopes Obama will visit if he wins Tuesday's vote. "Senator Obama's connection goes back six generations, to when his ancestor Fulmuth Kearney emigrated" in 1850, said Church of Ireland Cannon Stephen Neill. "There is a lot of excitement in the area," Neill added, as residents look forward to gathering at Ollie Hayes's Bar to follow the election results from the other side of the Atlantic. The entire Kearney family has emigrated from the area, though some cousins by marriage still live locally. Gone, too, is the Kearney family shoe shop, with remaining traces of the building demolished three years ago. Some 34 million people in the United States claim Irish heritage, and past presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy all had Irish roots.