McCown, Maguire and King Tut

Hey! The newspapers exagerate to get readership all the time. Actually, according to an article by Alice Baghdjian/ Reuters-Mon, Aug 1, 2011, half the men in Europe
and 70% of those in the British Isles have the same R1b1a2 haplogroup as does King Tut. If you can't wait, then use your favorite search engine and use the search
term Half of European men share King Tut's DNA.

A very high percentage of men in northern Ireland, not just that part in the UK called Northern Ireland have that DNA. This also true of western Scotland, Argyll and the islands off the west coast of Scotland, and the Isle of Man.

I needed to update the blog before it expired, besides, it gives us something to talk about.

Flash in the Pan or Much Ado about Nothing

It seems my previous post was wildly optimistic. The lady mentioned and I are not
related in the McManus line even a little bit, and no relationship with her McCown
line can be proven because of a lack of any surviving males to take a DNA test in her
line.

McManus/McCown Connection in South Carolina, 1775

This just in from our news room. An email has been received from a lady descended
from both McManus and McCown. She even had my FTDNA Kit no.. This could be a very
productive lead for her lines as well as mine, especially, mine since we have no known history before 1792 in South Carolina or anywhere else except for the vital
Y-DNA results.

Since McManus is one of the principle families in the Maguire clan this may give us a clue just where McKown/McCown fits in with the overall Maguire clan scheme of things.
It has the potential of being a genealogical break through for both of us.

I am waiting for more information from her such as if she has suitable Y-DNA male
test candidates for both McManus and McCown. She has already mentioned two specific counties in South Carolina in 1775 and my hope is that that will give a toe hold to my
brother Dick to exploit and share our research with hers.

This is the first potential breakthrough we have had to the parents and grandparents
of our great great grandfather, Lawrence McCown and better yet, it should be
supported by both conventional research and DNA. I hope to have more in the next
posting.

New Leads and More Results

On the subject of results, I need to correct my 67 marker result with Jim McKown
from 101/111 to 105/111 and add Joseph D. McGuire at 101/111 markers. Also, I
am confirmed as L513 positive in keeping with the rest of the Maguire group who have been tested.

The fair Coane and her husband have turned up some interesting leads. The word
Edeganny comes up in two Maguires and one McOwen. The fair Coane's husband has found that the root word in Gaelic from which it derives is Deacon. I am not familiar with church practice in the 1600's but in these cases, it is not always placed at the front of the name.

For example we have a Maguire with Edganny at the beginning of the name and his son, Rory McEdeganny Maguire and Owen McOwen Edeganny.

All three of these appear on the same page in the records of Fermanagh and Tyrone.
Meanwhile, Patrick MacAuley, has found that a similar sounding root (at least to a
non-Gaelic speaker) sounds much like the root which is rendered as Deacon, but in this case, comes from an accolade to Hugh Maguire, a Maguire chief and refers to his
generosity as in Hugh the Generous.

Now the chore is to somehow connect McCown/McOwen to Maguire to either of those leads.

More Testing is in Progress

Since the previous post, several more 111 marker level results have been reported.
In addition, both Jim McKown and I have been tested for SNP L513. Jim is L513+ and my results are "pending". On Mike Walsh's R-L21 1113 Combo DNA Results, Mike shows
Jim and I as P66+ as tested and L513+(by default). Since my 111 marker test result shows that I am a genetic distance of one more than is allowed by FTDNA
in their match criteria, my only current match at 111 markers is Jim at 101/111
markers.

This reminds me of a progress report written my an engineering manager who said "
the project is slightly off course but making good progress." But, hope and the blog
spring eternal so perhaps there will be something to report in the next posting.

Although Jim and I definitely have a Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) at about
the year 1661 AD, his line appears to be some generations older than mine. I have
no rational comment to make on that.

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.