Sandy and I are home again and then there is the other stuff. We haven't been able to pay the tour guide because I cannot fathom Paypal, practically all of our pictures of the trip have been lost, we are sick as dogs and thoroughly worn out and everything that we needed to do had we been home still needs to be done.
Now that we are all on the same page, the highlights of the trip included marvelous work by our esteemed tour guide, host and friend (at least if I can work it out with Paypal). It was some of the best money we ever spent to have John Cunningham as our tour guide. There is no doubt whatsoever that we saw many more things of interest due to John's deep and abiding love for ferMannah (Fermanagh) and his knowledge of what to see when time is short than had we chosen to rent and drive a car. Someone has to be aware of the meaning of what is being seen and interpreting it. In my opinion, had we survived renting a car and driving it in a way that would be understood by other drivers, out trip would not have been anywhere near as informative and productive had we not had John's interpretive explanations.
John not only knows his subjects in great depth, but he explains it so that it is easily understood. John doesn't lead safaris. All his work is done in a Renault turbo charged diesel passenger car which has a maximum capacity of 3 big fat fellers. Every where we went
there were people who knew and liked John. He is the only man I know who would send his wife along to chaperone his daughter and an 80 year old man. Now, I consider that an extreme measure to make your clients feel young again.
We visited every county in Northern Ireland, UK, plus Counties Cavan, Leitrim, and Donegal. We visited or drove through every parish in Fermanagh, visited and walked through two castles and saw more castles as well. We saw the island where Robert the Bruce watched the spider fail at finishing his web and finally succdeeding. We had our picture taken in front of Enniskillen Castle, visited Devenish Island with it's religious ruins dating back to 650 AD. Saw Connemara ponies at the Hamilton Castle ruin in Monea and saw Sorley Boy MacDonald's castle, the Giant's Causeway, visited several Catholic and Church of Ireland churches and cemeteries as well as Holy Wells. Then on the second day--
just kidding, but John works all day every day and makes sure that his clients get their moneys worth even if it kills them. I will continue this post when I am sufficiently recovered.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Five Nights Sleeping in an Irish Pub
Never frequenting bars, saloons or pubs, I confess to you freely that we plan to sleep five nights at Mahoon's Fiddlestone Pub and Guesthouse in Belleek, Fermanagh. As business names go, we also plan to have dinner in Belfast at The Barking Dog. Fortunately for me, the good brethren at the local Methodist church never read my blog.
The closer we get to leaving home next Wednesday, there is more stuff that remains to be done before the trip than we realized. Yesterday, was very warm in California's Central Valley. We had stopped for lunch in Merced, named after El Rio de Nuestra Senora de Merced. On restarting the car there was a sound like a fully revved up Harley Davidson motorcycle with no muffler but with a giant megaphone tailpipe. It turned out that the noise came from the fan motor that sends warm or cold air to the passenger compartment of my car.
The Ford dealer retrieved some insulation material and the remains of a very dead mouse from the fan motor housing. This also involved a lot of driving time from Merced to Modesto, waiting for the repair and then making up time for things we needed to buy in preparation for the trip to Fermanagh.
The fair Coane has asked me to say hello to a mountain or her behalf in Donegal amd tour guide John Cunningham has to give two talks on the morning of the 11th so we will go along with him and visit parts of the Sperrin Mountains as well. The alternative was to spend an entire day at the museum in Enniskillen Castle. We do expect to spend some time there, but not a whole day.
You have all taken long trips before so you know the drill and the hassle and hopefully some good times as well.
The closer we get to leaving home next Wednesday, there is more stuff that remains to be done before the trip than we realized. Yesterday, was very warm in California's Central Valley. We had stopped for lunch in Merced, named after El Rio de Nuestra Senora de Merced. On restarting the car there was a sound like a fully revved up Harley Davidson motorcycle with no muffler but with a giant megaphone tailpipe. It turned out that the noise came from the fan motor that sends warm or cold air to the passenger compartment of my car.
The Ford dealer retrieved some insulation material and the remains of a very dead mouse from the fan motor housing. This also involved a lot of driving time from Merced to Modesto, waiting for the repair and then making up time for things we needed to buy in preparation for the trip to Fermanagh.
The fair Coane has asked me to say hello to a mountain or her behalf in Donegal amd tour guide John Cunningham has to give two talks on the morning of the 11th so we will go along with him and visit parts of the Sperrin Mountains as well. The alternative was to spend an entire day at the museum in Enniskillen Castle. We do expect to spend some time there, but not a whole day.
You have all taken long trips before so you know the drill and the hassle and hopefully some good times as well.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Sorting McCowns and McKowns in Fermangh and America
I have taken the liberty of reporting to you, in his own words, some very interesting thoughts in regard to the DNA matches between Jim McKown, and me, and research sources from William Roulston, Research Director,
Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
Dear William,
That is very interesting to have found such a close match. One wonders
whether your earliest ancestor in America and his were brothers,
uncle/nephew or cousins, and whether they emigrated together and then
went their separate ways in America.
With regard to the McKowns in Fermanagh in 1911, I carried out an
exercise comparing these names with the 1901 census. Interestingly, not
one of the McKowns in 1911 turns up with that spelling in 1901.
There were, as you have noted, 7 instances of McKown in Fermanagh 1901
(all in the townland of Crocknagrally, and interestingly Protestant
(Church of Ireland)) - again their surnames were spelled differently in
1911 (McKeown).
The difficulty you have is the fact that official records of emigration
from the British Isles do not begin until 1890. Before that you are
depending on the survival of a passenger lists or records in America of
people arriving there.
Have you had a look at Janie Revill, 'A Compilation of the Original
Lists of Protestant Immigrants to South Carolina, 1763-1773', Columbia
SC: The State Company, 1939, reprinted Baltimore: Genealogical
Publishing Company, 1968. It might be worth checking that out.
Another difficulty is that we still are not certain where your ancestors
left from. Certainly DNA has shown that your McCown ancestor was
originally a Maguire and therefore his origins lie in County Fermanagh.
However, the considerable disruption to Irish society in the 17th
century meant that people ended up in areas perhaps some distance from
where they came from. Our friend from the early 1600s, Edmond Maguire
McCown, turns up in Tyrone. There were even Maguires in Strabane in the
1660s.
As emigrants often maintained a degree of kinship, what could be useful
would be to assemble a list of the surnames that occur in the immediate
environs of the McCown homestead in South Carolina. Would that be
something difficult to do? Then by comparing the names with their
distribution here in Ulster it might be possible to see patterns that
could lead to where your ancestors lived in Ireland prior to their
departure.
An interesting discovery that I've just made is that of a Lawrence
McQuoan in The Five Towns, Creggan parish, County Louth, in 1766. He was
a Catholic. One can easily imagine McQuoan being pronounced in much the
same way as McCown.
A further interesting discovery, perhaps even more so, is that of a
Laurence McCowen in Lisburn, a town near Belfast, in 1766. He was a
Protestant. It was the combination of names in both instances that I
found so interesting. Law(u)rence is certainly not a common
'Scots-Irish' name. Lisburn and the Lagan Valley certainly was an area
associated with with large-scale migration to Colonial America.
Regards,
William
---------------------------------------
Dr William Roulston
Research Director
Ulster Historical Foundation
49 Malone Road
Belfast, BT9 6RY
028 9066 1988
http://www.ancestryireland.com
Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
Dear William,
That is very interesting to have found such a close match. One wonders
whether your earliest ancestor in America and his were brothers,
uncle/nephew or cousins, and whether they emigrated together and then
went their separate ways in America.
With regard to the McKowns in Fermanagh in 1911, I carried out an
exercise comparing these names with the 1901 census. Interestingly, not
one of the McKowns in 1911 turns up with that spelling in 1901.
There were, as you have noted, 7 instances of McKown in Fermanagh 1901
(all in the townland of Crocknagrally, and interestingly Protestant
(Church of Ireland)) - again their surnames were spelled differently in
1911 (McKeown).
The difficulty you have is the fact that official records of emigration
from the British Isles do not begin until 1890. Before that you are
depending on the survival of a passenger lists or records in America of
people arriving there.
Have you had a look at Janie Revill, 'A Compilation of the Original
Lists of Protestant Immigrants to South Carolina, 1763-1773', Columbia
SC: The State Company, 1939, reprinted Baltimore: Genealogical
Publishing Company, 1968. It might be worth checking that out.
Another difficulty is that we still are not certain where your ancestors
left from. Certainly DNA has shown that your McCown ancestor was
originally a Maguire and therefore his origins lie in County Fermanagh.
However, the considerable disruption to Irish society in the 17th
century meant that people ended up in areas perhaps some distance from
where they came from. Our friend from the early 1600s, Edmond Maguire
McCown, turns up in Tyrone. There were even Maguires in Strabane in the
1660s.
As emigrants often maintained a degree of kinship, what could be useful
would be to assemble a list of the surnames that occur in the immediate
environs of the McCown homestead in South Carolina. Would that be
something difficult to do? Then by comparing the names with their
distribution here in Ulster it might be possible to see patterns that
could lead to where your ancestors lived in Ireland prior to their
departure.
An interesting discovery that I've just made is that of a Lawrence
McQuoan in The Five Towns, Creggan parish, County Louth, in 1766. He was
a Catholic. One can easily imagine McQuoan being pronounced in much the
same way as McCown.
A further interesting discovery, perhaps even more so, is that of a
Laurence McCowen in Lisburn, a town near Belfast, in 1766. He was a
Protestant. It was the combination of names in both instances that I
found so interesting. Law(u)rence is certainly not a common
'Scots-Irish' name. Lisburn and the Lagan Valley certainly was an area
associated with with large-scale migration to Colonial America.
Regards,
William
---------------------------------------
Dr William Roulston
Research Director
Ulster Historical Foundation
49 Malone Road
Belfast, BT9 6RY
028 9066 1988
http://www.ancestryireland.com
Saturday, August 7, 2010
As the Buzzard, said, Patience Heck, I'm Gonna Kill Me Somehtin'
Since last I mentioned Jim McKown, brother Dick suggested that the probable reason
that Jim's family tree doesn't match his DNA is that there is an error in the family
tree because DNA doesn't lie. Jim confirms that from about 1785 to present, his family tree reflects his own research and the part going back to 1685 in Perth, Scotland, was furnished by another researcher. That doesn't mean that the research was bad by either researcher but that the tree is grafted where it shouldn't oughta be.
FTDNA has a tool to predict the percent probability that two men who match had a Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) so many years ago, with the usual comparison by four generations apart. Cousin Sam, descended from the younger brother of my great grand father, and Jim McKown and I have MRCA's that differ by only hundredths of a percent at any generation going back 24 generations (600 years ago at 25 years per
generation).
The case is further strengthened in that only Sam and Jim match me exactly at 12 and 25 markers and at 36/37. Sam has his 67 marker result and it is a 66/67 match.
The next best matches from other men to date are 24/25, 34/37 and 63/67 and I consider those as very important as well.
As far as I am concerned, Jim, Sam and I are related based on our surname and 36/37 matches alone. The MRCA is icing on the cake and I fully expect when Jim's 67 marker results come in, that he will match me at 66/67 as well. Oh, by the way,
by calculating the MRCA by each generation, Sam and I have enough percentage of probability to be judged by two FTDNA Group administrators as close enough to show
a relationship 7 generations ago, which comes out as 175 years ago. Since it is only 140 years from my great great grandfather's birth to mine that MRCA could have been in only as far back as 1755.
that Jim's family tree doesn't match his DNA is that there is an error in the family
tree because DNA doesn't lie. Jim confirms that from about 1785 to present, his family tree reflects his own research and the part going back to 1685 in Perth, Scotland, was furnished by another researcher. That doesn't mean that the research was bad by either researcher but that the tree is grafted where it shouldn't oughta be.
FTDNA has a tool to predict the percent probability that two men who match had a Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) so many years ago, with the usual comparison by four generations apart. Cousin Sam, descended from the younger brother of my great grand father, and Jim McKown and I have MRCA's that differ by only hundredths of a percent at any generation going back 24 generations (600 years ago at 25 years per
generation).
The case is further strengthened in that only Sam and Jim match me exactly at 12 and 25 markers and at 36/37. Sam has his 67 marker result and it is a 66/67 match.
The next best matches from other men to date are 24/25, 34/37 and 63/67 and I consider those as very important as well.
As far as I am concerned, Jim, Sam and I are related based on our surname and 36/37 matches alone. The MRCA is icing on the cake and I fully expect when Jim's 67 marker results come in, that he will match me at 66/67 as well. Oh, by the way,
by calculating the MRCA by each generation, Sam and I have enough percentage of probability to be judged by two FTDNA Group administrators as close enough to show
a relationship 7 generations ago, which comes out as 175 years ago. Since it is only 140 years from my great great grandfather's birth to mine that MRCA could have been in only as far back as 1755.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Newly Found Cousin, Jim McKown
Jim just received his FTDNA Y-DNA results. We match exactly at 12 and 25 markers and at 36/37. This is truly exciting to me because, although my brother, Dick, had read Jim's family tree on Ancestry.com, we didn't appear to be related---but that was then and this in now, Oh, Boy! That means he has all of the Maguire clan matches as well as other Ulster matches that I do.
Why did I write this? Because I just had to tell somebody!
Why did I write this? Because I just had to tell somebody!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
William McCown, White Slave
Everyone who gets into genealogical research of their family surname, dreads a
result such as this. In this case, we don't know when our earliest ancestor arrived in America or what his given name may have been or whether he was Protestant or Catholic or what his circumstances were.
I have said repeatedly that I have neither the right nor the knowledge to judge my ancestors, never mind apologizing for their circumstances, that is God's province and not mine. In this case, this particular William McCown, of County Donegal was captured by Oliver Cromwell's troops in 1650. He survived the the ocean trip to America but there was sold into slavery under the direction of Oliver Cromwell's government. White slaves were treated just like black slaves and if they ran away were beaten and if they did it again they were branded on their forheads with an R.
This William McCown ran away and was not caught. Praise God!
I doubt that he was either the first or last native of Ulster to suffer such a fate at the hands of Cromwell and his Ironsides, particulary since there were zero English Puritans among the native Irish. Since most of Ulster had been
through the great plantation of Ireland by 1635, and the native Irish were Roman Catholics, Cromwell used the expediency of killing a great many of them to get control of Ulster and remove the Roman Catholics. It was very effective.
If it should turn out that we find this William McCown in our family line, then we will celebrate his successful escape. But, feel shame on his behalf? Never in a thousand years! Each of us has enough to answer for without answering for our ancestors, and from what little I got from a Google search using the term, McCown, Donegal,this William did nothing wrong that I know of.
So, the genealogical research will go on as usual, remembering that most of the Irish in America were forced to leave Ireland by religious, economic conditions or outright warfare.
result such as this. In this case, we don't know when our earliest ancestor arrived in America or what his given name may have been or whether he was Protestant or Catholic or what his circumstances were.
I have said repeatedly that I have neither the right nor the knowledge to judge my ancestors, never mind apologizing for their circumstances, that is God's province and not mine. In this case, this particular William McCown, of County Donegal was captured by Oliver Cromwell's troops in 1650. He survived the the ocean trip to America but there was sold into slavery under the direction of Oliver Cromwell's government. White slaves were treated just like black slaves and if they ran away were beaten and if they did it again they were branded on their forheads with an R.
This William McCown ran away and was not caught. Praise God!
I doubt that he was either the first or last native of Ulster to suffer such a fate at the hands of Cromwell and his Ironsides, particulary since there were zero English Puritans among the native Irish. Since most of Ulster had been
through the great plantation of Ireland by 1635, and the native Irish were Roman Catholics, Cromwell used the expediency of killing a great many of them to get control of Ulster and remove the Roman Catholics. It was very effective.
If it should turn out that we find this William McCown in our family line, then we will celebrate his successful escape. But, feel shame on his behalf? Never in a thousand years! Each of us has enough to answer for without answering for our ancestors, and from what little I got from a Google search using the term, McCown, Donegal,this William did nothing wrong that I know of.
So, the genealogical research will go on as usual, remembering that most of the Irish in America were forced to leave Ireland by religious, economic conditions or outright warfare.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Fair Coane Gets a Break
The fair Coane had been reading this blog for awhile before contacting me about a possible connection between her family and mine. She has furnished some very valuable information used in the blog as well as being used by other researchers.
Things are tough when you are looking in the window, but can't participate, but now, a male in her paternal line has taken the 37 marker Y-DNA test. All I know to date about the result is that their Coane line has the Niall of the Nine Hostages
haplogroup and my line does not. It is a matter of her line being M222+ and mine being M222-.
This is not a major surprise since their Coane Coat of Arms includes an O'Neill crest. Now the crest is explained. There may be O'Connor's in the mix as well because many of them also share M222-. If you have been tested by FTDNA but have not had them test your sample for deep subclades, that is where you will find such things as M222+ or -.
In the Coane line, unless her male relative has had the deep subclade test, it must have been so strong that FTDNA predicted the haplogroup. FTDNA is very careful with their predictions and usually, you can take them to the bank.
I really get a kick out of it when someone has done so much good research but can find no one in the paternal line to take the test and gets a windfall like this.
Congratulations to the fair Coane and her male relative as well!
Our trip to Fermanagh is really shaping up. We had a siege of paper work that all had to be done right now, and now, we can relax for a bit. As planned, we will be met at the airport by one of John Cunningham's drivers and be driven directly to Belleek, County Fermanagh, a two hour trip during which we well see about 80 miles of beautiful scenery. The fair Coane recommended John Cunningham's tour service in glowing terms and already he has been very helpful. If you are interested, email him
at Adam4Eves@aol.com. (No, I will not comment on his choice of email address)
Things are tough when you are looking in the window, but can't participate, but now, a male in her paternal line has taken the 37 marker Y-DNA test. All I know to date about the result is that their Coane line has the Niall of the Nine Hostages
haplogroup and my line does not. It is a matter of her line being M222+ and mine being M222-.
This is not a major surprise since their Coane Coat of Arms includes an O'Neill crest. Now the crest is explained. There may be O'Connor's in the mix as well because many of them also share M222-. If you have been tested by FTDNA but have not had them test your sample for deep subclades, that is where you will find such things as M222+ or -.
In the Coane line, unless her male relative has had the deep subclade test, it must have been so strong that FTDNA predicted the haplogroup. FTDNA is very careful with their predictions and usually, you can take them to the bank.
I really get a kick out of it when someone has done so much good research but can find no one in the paternal line to take the test and gets a windfall like this.
Congratulations to the fair Coane and her male relative as well!
Our trip to Fermanagh is really shaping up. We had a siege of paper work that all had to be done right now, and now, we can relax for a bit. As planned, we will be met at the airport by one of John Cunningham's drivers and be driven directly to Belleek, County Fermanagh, a two hour trip during which we well see about 80 miles of beautiful scenery. The fair Coane recommended John Cunningham's tour service in glowing terms and already he has been very helpful. If you are interested, email him
at Adam4Eves@aol.com. (No, I will not comment on his choice of email address)
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