Wishful Thinking?

Jim McKown and I are 65/67 and 105/111 matches. FTDNA now says that our most recent common ancestor lived 14 generations ago. Using FTDNA's standard calculation of 25 years per generation, that would mean that we had most recent common ancestor in 1661AD. Perhaps this will provide a clue as to which of the Maguires with John, Owen or MacOwen among their names could be our ancestor.

I recently was contacted by Elaine Keown whose family settled near Abbeville, South
Carolina in 1770. Brother Dick says that he has exhausted the record search for our
gggf Lawrence's parents. There were few written records among the Scotch-Irish and
Irish and everyone else who lived anywhere but in a major settlement having ever had
written records in South Carolina. Add disasters such as court house fires, the War of 1812 and the Civil War and it is a marvel that any records survive from before 1790 in the hinterlands.

Even in Virginia, the only written record of Lawrence's marriage in 1815 is that kept by the Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church, Abingdon, VA.