It has been a persistent belief, one perpetuated by Buffalo Bill Cody’s sister Helen in her book “Last of the Great Scouts,” that their family came from Ireland. In fact, the original American ancestors were Huguenots who emigrated to Massachusetts from France via the Channel Islands sometime before 1698. The family name gradually became anglicized from LeCaude to Cody. One branch of the family moved on to Ontario, Canada, where Buffalo Bill’s father, Isaac, was born in 1811. As recently as 1972, the Cody Family Association believed that the Irish and Huguenot lines might have been connected early on, but the two families in America have been quite distinct, and any connections are modern. The Irish Cody family can claim at least one legendary descendant of its own. The mother of the Australian frontiersman and outlaw hero, Ned Kelly, was one Mary Cody of Tipperary.