Wednesday, September 14, 2011

McCown Surname Group

FTDNA's McCown Surname Group has more than thirty members. The Ulster Heritage Group has divided most of those members into Mac Eoghain, Mac EoghainI and Mac Eoghain II.

Leonard McCown is administrator and Chris McCown is co-administrator of the surname group. Still, not all McCown/McKown named people are in any of those groups. In
addition, at least one of the McCowns and a McKown all of the Ewings (in Mac Eoghain I) appear to be in the haplogroup commonly referred to as Northwest Irish or Niall of the Nine Hostages and therefor related to the O'Connors and the O'Neills. A couple of others of the surname are simply categorized by haplogroup and three of us are
in the Mag Uidhir II (Maguire II) Group on the Ulser Heritage Group website.

Most of those in the Mac Eoghain group are descended from Alexander McCown and his six sons who immigrated to Pensylvania from Antrim about 1715. The larger group is descended from Francis and John McCown, who by DNA are closely related to the six sons group.

Some of these lived some time in County Tyrone before moving to America and it isn't clear, but is believed that they were originally of Scottish descent.

Leonard McCown has been told by Barry McCain, administrator of the Ulster Heritage
Group that he is descended, through Francis, from an Argyll Galloglais family.
These Galloglais were specially trained and armed warriors who hired out to various
chiefs in both Scotland and Ireland and many of those who served in Ireland remained there as early as 1450.

All of this is to make it clear that McCown is both Scots and Irish.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Very interesting about the Francis line of whom I am a member - DNA results verified family tradition.

Just last week in Mississippi lady in her 80's interrupted a conversation I was having. She looked into my eyes, turn my right palm toward her, and said, "Yes, you have warriors in your family line."

I am now officially spooked.