Maguire Land Grant in the Carolinas

The fair Coane reports having seen a reference to the subject grant in the Clogher Record. She says that one of the more recent members of the Maguire chiefly line received a grant and that he, in turn, invited others from County Fermanagh and other
parts of Ulster to come and settle the land. This of course, could conceivably lead
to some clues as to the identity of my line's earliest ancestor in America. That,
boys and girls would be quite a success, because most Americans of Irish descent have
little or no chance of discovering their roots both in America and in Ulster, especally in South Carolina in these early times. I have felt that brother Dick and I have been trying to build a suspension bridge from information in the colonies to records in Ulster, with the help of DNA. The problem is that no matter how fine a bridge we build it will not support itself without firm foundations at both ends and we don't have foundations at either end as yet.

The fair Coane and husband are going to Ireland to attend a family wedding and will also visit the records in Dublin. Hopefully, they will turn up something on the Maguire land grant in the Carolinas. Both the fair Coane and her husband remember
having read the artilce, but at the time, were not researching the Maguires---never
mind helping the McCowns so it has been a difficult search. Good friends, such as
these, are truly a genealogical god send.

On the DNA front, Brad McGuire got his 68-111 marker results but they are now under review because of the result of 0 or null value on one marker that appears to be in
error. Also, the FTDNA lab is overloaded with new tests and debugging results from
some of the earliest results of the Y111 test. For that reason, Brad's Walking the
Y test in which his entire Y chromosome is tested for all of the SNP's that can be found, is delayed by the current lab overload. Both Jim McKown and I have received our Y111 test results with no apparent errors and hope all of our marker results
survive what ever debugging is required.

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.