The Genetic Evolution of the McMurtry/McMurtrie Family

Richard McMurtry

June 2019

Background

In 2004, McMurtry/McMurtrie family historians discovered that it was possible to get DNA samples from living McM. and infer relationships about their ancestors several hundred years before.

In 2019, an upgrading of DNA samples obtained during the 2004-2011 period, enabled us to synthesize a chart of the evolution of the McM family from its origins in Scotland through its immigration to Ireland and to America and Canada and elsewhere.

Many thanks to all those McM. who have donated DNA samples and in some cases donated funding to enable the testing to take place.

Discussion

Almost all McM families in the world appear to have descended from three unrelated individuals whose descendants have a generally distinctive pattern.

(1) Scottish Patronymic Pattern: families originating in various parishes in Ayrshire, Scotland (exclusive of Dalmellington) and found later in various locations in Co Antrim.

(2) Ayrshire/Derry Pattern: families with origins in the Ayrshire Parish of Dailly and perhaps KIrkmichael and found later in Co Derry, Northern Ireland

(3) Dalmellington Pattern: families originating in Dalmellington, Ayrshire Scotland and nearby,

The vast majority of McM individuals living today come from the first grouping, principally because when they came to America, the abundance of resources enabled them to have an abundance of progeny generation to generation until the family grew to very large numbers.

We begin our detailed discussion with the smallest of the groupings.

Dalmellington Group

The pattern of this grouping is represented by a family that can be traced back to the late 1600s/early 1700s in Dalmellington Parish, kin southeastern Ayrshire. This includes the family of David McMurtrie b 1721 who came to Philadelphia in 1752 and his nephew William b 1740 who came to Philadelphia in 1759 (Clan Family 113) and the family of Duncan b 1748 (Clan Family 19) whose descendants remained in Dalmellington until the family dispersed in the mid-1800s to other locations in Ayrshire, elsewhere in Scotland and to America. Also the included are the family of David b 1700-1710 of Dalmellington, some of whose descendants spread to Little Barnshean in Kirmichael Parish(CF 104) and John b 1733 Dalmellington whose descendants went to Kilmarnock (CF23) in the mid-1800s. This group also includes families that can not be traced back to Dalmellington but have the same DNA pattern: Thomas md 1781 to Marion Bol in Dam of Barnshean, Kirkmichael (CF18), and three families that made their way to Edinburgh in the 1800s, namely James md 1848 Edinburgh=>New Zealand (CF48), Thomas b 1810=>Edinburgh with desc in South Australia (CF45), Thomas b 1798 Galston=>Edinburgh by 1836. These families’ DNA suggest a calculated common ancestors with the Dalmellington family around 1700.

Ayrshire/Derry Group

This group have its origins in Dailly Parish, Ayrshire and included descendants bearing the original DNA signature, including Clan Family 1 that migrated to Barr Parish by the 1740s and then to Girvan. There were three major offshoots of this family. One (Clan Family 12) migrated to Kirkmichael and then to Ayr town. A second migrated to southern Co Derry in Ireland and had descendants including Clan Family 203 James McMurtry 1794-1878 who migrated to Ottawa area of Ontario Canada and Clan Family 211 Alexander McMurtry whose son James b 1810 came to Boston). A third offshoot migrated to Co Derry and was the progenitor of several Irish families including CF 210 Thomas 1818-1894 who migrated to Ontario and then Saskatchewan, CF 206 John b 1805 who came to New Brunswick by 1847 and then moved to Nova Scotia by the 1860s, and two distantly related families of Aghadowey in Co Derry, namely, CF 221 Hugh 1797-1887 and CF 243 James b 1791.

DNA suggests a common ancestor of CF 203- the Ottawa McMurtrys with CF 1 – the Dailly-Barr McMurtries in the mid-1600s.

Ayrshire/Antrim Group

The Scottish Patronymic

The earliest DNA pattern of this third grouping is thought to be represented by the DNA pattern of John McMurtrie a descendant of John McMurtrie b abt 1690 (CF 28) and resided in Kirkmichael Parish, Ayrshire. Though there may also be representatives of this original pattern in Kirkoswald(CF 37: Matthew md pr 1696) and in Dailly (CF39: James md 1768), we have not upgraded these samples to be sure. Four or five other of the Scottish families have only 1 or 2 mutations suggesting a common ancestor not long prior to the earliest recorded ancestor in the 1700s. One other of the Scottish families has 6 mutations suggesting common ancestor way back in the 1400s.

The subset of the McM families of this group that went to Ireland have a more comprehensible set of patterns.

Some branches of the Scottish family that came to Ireland in the 1600s kept the original DNA pattern without mutation and their descendants who came to the New World continued to keep the same pattern. These include an Alexander McMurtry who came from Ireland to Hunterdon County New Jersey by 1747 and died there in 1761 (CF 112/CF108) and William McMurtry of Co Antrim and Co Carlow (b 1778 d 1855) (CF 202) who came from Co Antrim/Co Carlow to Bowmanville, Ontario about 1821.

The CF 110 Mutation

Some time about 1500, a branch of the family began having genetic mutations that resulted in 3 DNA markers (DYS 458, DYS 557, and DYS 534) having different values than all other McM families. Sometime in the 1600s this family moved to Ireland and in the 1730s three brothers, Joseph McMurtrie d 1761, Robert McMurtrie d 1775, and Thomas McMurtry d 1788 came to Somerset and Sussex County New Jersey (Clan Family 110). This family prospered with many progeny and became the family with the largest number of descendants in the world. We have never found a family with this exact DNA pattern in Ireland or Scotland or elsewhere in the world.

The CF 111 Mutation

A third branch of the Scottish family came to Ireland in the 1600s and had two mutations probably in the 1600s, 100 years later than the CF 110 mutation, while in Ireland (DYS 449 and DYS557) and then around 1750 a descendant, Alexander McMurtry (CF 111) ,arrived in Augusta Co Virginia and died there prior to 1751 leaving a widow and two young children John McMurtry 1738?-1790 who migrated to Kentucky about 1780 and Samuel McMurtrey 1744-1796 who migrated to Abbeville Co South Carolina about 1765 (CF 111).

The Irish Mutation

Another branch of the Scottish family migrated to Ireland and had a single unique mutation that characterizes most of the McM family of that remained in Co Antrim such as the family of Alexander McMurtry of Bruslee 1754-1830 (CF 121) and the family of Matthew 1750-1813 of Island Magee (CF 201) as well as families that migrated to the America, including William McMurtrey b about 1750 who came to Laurens County South Carolina about 1773 (CF 117) and John McMurtry b 1752 and his brother James McMurtry b 1769? who appear to have migrated to America just before the Revolutionary War, settling either in Pennsylvania (where John enlisted in the Revolutionary army) or New Jersey (where John married in 1781) and then migrated to Orange Co North Carolina about 1785 and then to Sumner Co Tennessee about 1794. James b 1769 continued on to Humphreys Co Tennessee between 1807 and 1810. (This last family was previously thought for 70 years to be part of the Somerset Co NJ McM because of John’s marriage there, but the DNA proves conclusively that this Tennessee family is NOT descended from the Somerset Co NJ McMs.)

Attached is a schematic of the relationships between these various families of the Ayrshire/Antrim group.