Hi Ruth, yes "northwest Irish" is one of those Rs. See http://www.m222.net/R1b1c7.htm . They have a unique mutation so they are only ONE variety of R -- themselves. www.jogg.info/22/ONeill.pdf http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~colin/DriscollOfCork/DNA/Hap/R1b/R1b1c7.htm If you have McLaughlin from Raphoe most likely it is NW Irish. Otherwise its kind of like believing a cornplant growing in the middle of a field of corn is not a cornplant. It looks like corn and it's growing where corn grows so it's corn. Of course it could be a strange houseplant but not too likely <grin>! (I have one that looks like a small corn plant....). This is a liberal art major's version of 'statistics'.... >Once one DNA tests, how does one get access to the sort of fascinating >information you speak of — the kind being sorted out by the Dublin <geneticists. One of the things I've found difficult in the three DNA >project in which I am involved is how little real help there seems to >be—or I just haven't looked in the right places. It's a bit like the >blind leading the blind, admins who are non-existent.... Yeh, that's the problem. You can't easily even hire someone to check out your DNA because there are very few people who actually can understand this in depth. (some listed at www.isogg.org). Also it is somewhat luck of the draw. If you have 'popular' DNA it is much easier to get attention. We're the lab rats and the scientists need funding. In this case much comes from the lab rats. I have 67 markers tested on my father but to this date I have not even had a 37 marker match. Hmm I thought maybe he was a lost neanderthal or something <grin>. I could find no one interested in helping. I did a little study and decided it was Frisian. Then low and behold I got email from a French scientist who is researching my dad's DNA type (another flavor of R, by the way). It looks like he has a rare mutation that would mean his Frisian ancestors (I was right, astonishing for a liberal arts major) were in England LONG before the Romans. It was usually believed the Germans didn't move over till 500 AD but there is both linguistic (English has no surviving close cousins) and DNA evidence that says otherwise. Apparently there is a mutation associated with this early Frisian migration. However Family Tree DNA didn't test for it so he tried to talk me into paying $700 to repeat the 67 markers and get the mutation tested at some other firm. Sorry, I am broke and cursed with cheap relatives. He then tried to get me to talk my ex (who was born in France) to test, but my ex thinks the CIA is behind these DNA tests..... so the poor man could squeeze no DNA tests out of us. BUT he explained that he would expect to not find many matches for my dad's DNA but didn't explain why. The trouble with these scientists is when they start talking you can't understand them anyway. The way you get your DNA into the clutches of the hungry scientists is upload them to ysearch.org . If you test with FTDNA you click on one button. People testing from other firms also upload there. Your email is provided as a contact. So that's how you bait the trap. They're particularly interested in DNA from the homeland (as opposed to Americans trying to find their homeland using DNA...). So if you can prove a point of origin, make sure to post that info. We know my dad's family's home village in England which intrested the French scientist. The other thing you do is you join free projects at FamilyTreeDNA. You of course would join a surname project. Once the results are back, usually FTDNA can also tell you where you might be 'from'. You look at the info in the varrious fields in your logon which shows where your matches are. However if you think they are from Ulster you also joined the Ulster Heritage DNA project. Or the Irish project. On the McAmis project, we joined the Irish project. The admin's ID'ed the DNA and shuffled us off immediately to the Ulster project. Everyone (who knows this stuff, at least 3 people!) could tell the DNA was from central Ulster. You get matches in y our login and you can also view the DNA in the Ulster Heritage DNA project. The admin groups them as the DNA results 'come in'. You can compare your DNA to all the rest yourself. Download the spreadsheet and sort away. Depending on your background this is easy or hard. The admin talks to the Dublin geneticists (if they haven't seen your DNA already). This database is their research lab. If they find it interesting no doubt you'll get email. We did from the admin. The geneticists work behind the scenes, which is okay, as we can't understand them (we're labrats). At this point the Ulster DNA is probably one of the most studied, right up there with Jewish DNA in popularity. One reason for this is that the Irish have the oldest genealogies in Europe, so you can hope to make a little more sense of it. Some of those genealogies are confirmed and some aren't. And as more data arrives the geneticists shift their positions. The most valuable DNA for them is that of men in Ulster of known family. Of course, given the history, they're even more paranoid than my ex husband <grin>! Luckily the admin of the project, who descends from a New England 1718 family, speaks Ulster Irish so they'll work with him. I glow orange in the dark -- no way I could ever be helpful at talking to these men. I have about 18 left feet when it comes to trying to talk to our Irish cousins. There is another resource -- the genealogy-dna email list. A lot of principals -- people actually doing the research are on the list and conduct most of the conversations. About 60 % or more are incomprehensive to me, which is better than 98%, which is what it was at first. You can ask (humbly, as a lab rat should) after you post results to ysearch for an opinion, adding details as bait and you may either find someone very interested in your DNA (who tries to talk you into spending a few hundred more dollars) or get some help at understanding it, pointed to another list that specializes in your type of DNA, etc. However if you don't have at least 37 markers tested they will ignore you <grin>! I guess they don't like poor labrats. Actually, there isn't enough data to say much. You can also goggle and find out information. Anyway there is very little in south western Scotland that isn't Irish. Alba was an Irish colony, after all. Before about 550 AD the Scotti were a tribe of Irish living in Antrim. They started a colony in Scotland and fought long and hard with the Picts (who also supposedly were Irish once -- probably walked to Scotland across a landbridge at the end of the last Ice Age, after walking up from what is now Spain). Eventually Kenneth McAlpin united them into one kingdom and it was called Scotland. St. Columba (an Irishman) of course christianized the Scots, Picts, and Angles in Northumbria, and there were plenty of Irish in the area. Another group left from Co. Down to go to the Galloway area with lots of Irish. Meanwhile people can build boats and went back and forth through the centuries. Still a lot of Scots families end up like yours -- more recent Irish immigrants. There is a parish in Antrim that documented its Scottish migrations in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs. Ten percent stayed each year. Well...100 years, 10% per year -- 100% stayed over 100 years. Scotland filled up. They assimilated fast. I told the story before -- it's in Black "Surnames of Scotland". Hysterically funny stories of Irish surnames becoming proper Scots ones. You'd never know from the grandchildren that the grandparents came over. However to test and find out you are northwest Irish is to win big because the geneticists will be interested. They also have a southern Irish type and of course the Scots are working on theirs -- playing catchup. What the Scots haplotype is (pict? Scotti? Angle?) I don't know. they were discussing whether it needed a new name or not on the DNA genealogy list. The trouble with these people is they don't know history (took statistics instead!). So they were saying there were a mighty lot of "Scots DNA" in England, not realizing that the current border cuts through Reged (Celtic kingdom to west) and Northumbria (Germanic kingdom to the east) in the Dark Ages and that before the Angles came it was all full of Picts and a few Romans fighting with them at Hadrians Wall. Duh..... So I guess it's Pictish DNA....They do need a new name, poor dears. You should test -- maybe your husband is another lost Irish prince. [Deletes a couple comments that could lead me to insult all the Irish on the list, though to me they would just be smart a** comments <grin>] >Johnston projects. !!! You could be a McShane!!! A small but popular group of O'Neills. One of my clients hit the jackpot on this one. Now they're trying to sort out the lineage in the 16th century ... free! Linda Merle ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ruth McLaughlin" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2010 4:49:39 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [S-I] Quiet List so..... Very interesting post, Linda. When a family member tests and family turns out to be "Northwest Irish," does that mean they have to be R1b of one kind of another? Or are they are a particular R1b category? Or not necessarily either of the above? My McLaughlin side (or should I say my husband's) was for all I, or even he, knew when we married, and for quite a few years afterward, a Scots family from Uddingston in Lanarkshire. Then came our first visit to Scotland to visit an elderly widow, the last remaining close blood relative. From this dear wee Auntie Mary, we heard the story of "her great journey" to Ireland to visit her husband, John Leckie's family; she quickly added "the Leckies and McLaughlins came from the same place, you know." We both sat bolt upright and said, "WHAT?!! ...." We'd been led to believe by Jack's long-widowed grandmother, Auntie Mary's sister, that her McLaughlin husband had been a Scotsman. This led us to finding out about, and travelling several times to, Raphoe in County Donegal. We've been told, there is a good chance that that particular McLaughlin family was Northwest Irish. My husband must DNA test; we both so love Northwest Ireland, it would be cool to test that way! The comical part of it all was when we told Grandma that we'd discovered the McLaughlins had emigrated from Ireland to Scotland in the late 1800s (something it turned out she knew all along), she quickly informed us they *really* were Scots in the first place, had gone to Ireland and were just coming back home! Once one DNA tests, how does one get access to the sort of fascinating information you speak of — the kind being sorted out by the Dublin geneticists. One of the things I've found difficult in the three DNA project in which I am involved is how little real help there seems to be—or I just haven't looked in the right places. It's a bit like the blind leading the blind, admins who are non-existent.... I've hesitated to push Jack to test until there seems to be more online help since I'm already swamped trying to understand Smith, Crozier and Johnston projects. Ruth in Ottawa On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 11:41 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi folks, of course if you are reading this you are still on the Scotch Irish list. If you feel inclined, let us know about your research interests. > > Here's mine. I continue to be amazed at the assistence DNA can be. I have a couple clients who have tested and turned out to be Northwest Irish -- better yet -- leading O'Neills. I can't say 'royal' because the main line was 'lost' either because the son of the blacksmith ... was the son of the blacksmith (First Earl of Tyrone) or... and, maybe, the geneticists think it was lost by 900 AD (unless they changed their minds and of course didn't tell me <grin>) . What happens in this case is that the geneticists in Dublin, attempting to sort out the early genealogies and DNA lines, pay a lot of attention to your DNA, free. So it is a big win. You sit and read about the O'Neills while they work hard on your DNA at no charge to you <grin>. > > So far, the now no longer lost O'Neills include a Johnston family that settled in western Pennsylvania about 1821, lived in Derrry and Unity Townships. NOT the 'famous Johnstons' who provided a governor or so to the state. These ones were Catholics. They are part of the McShane sept and came from Co Down. Merchants who had probably lived near Belfast before coming to the states, where they first settled in Baltimore. This is the clan webpages: http://www.clanmcshane.org/ > > Then we have the McCamish/McAmis clan of Tyrone. The American branch descends from three brothers who appeared in Virginia about 1770 and after the Revolution moved to eastern Tennessee. We established their place of origin through a DNA match in Australia to a man living in Tyrone. Mixed religions. > > There is another group in the Banbridge area of County Down who often are McComish. They are also north west Irish but not 'royal' eh, sorry, 'leading'. Mixed religions. > > They have a match in the USA with a man surnamed Clark who fathered a son in Illinois in 1902. The mother died and the father's whereabout are unknown. The mother's family raised the son. Oral family history said Mr. Clark was Irish. They are searching for more information, but what is clear is this man was an O'Neill. Any Clarks here have their DNA test results so we see if y ou match??? > > As for my own family, for new people, I have Andersons who settled in Western Pennsylvania in 1785 from what is now Franklin County, PA. They emigrated before the Revolution from County Antrim. Probably related to the Andersons who built Bushmills as they are also red headed, musical Covenantors. Blacks -- I descend from the brother of the Rev. John Black, from Aghohill, County Antrim. My Robert and his wife Sarah Aiken first settled in South Carolina about 1795 but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania due to the split in the Covenantor church in 1805. Norris -- from Swatragh, County Derry. A huge mess of Norrises came over and not all came to western PA. Wife's surname was Dowling. Also Marshall from Tyrone (though I am beginning to doubt that). Had 7 daughters. No DNA. And Kelly from County Down. Stuck in western PA at about 1820. Probably related to the Kellys of Wilkinsburg though not in any direct way (since the last one died without a legal heir). Mine were north of the Allegheny River in O'Hara/Indiana Township. > > Linda Merle (List Admin) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message