The McMurtrys of Ulster

By Richard McMurtry and Andrew McMurtry

February 2008

Origins

According to MacLysaght in Surnames of Ireland, the Gaelic origin of McMurtry is Mac Muircheartaigh. Muir means “sea” and cheartaigh means “navigator”. The name roughly translates to “sea navigator”. Father Woulfe points to McMurtry as indigenous Irish, but it has been largely overshadowed by the families who brought the name to Ulster from Scotland. Black notes that in Argyll it’s a form of MacKirdie. Sources such as Ulster Ancestry indicate “MacCurdy is common on the islands of Arran and Bute, where it is a variant of MacMurtrie, a sept of Clan Stuart of Bute.”

The earliest records of McMurtrys in Ulster are the 1630 Muster Rolls for North Antrim. John McMurtery and Thomas McMourtry, both of Dunluce, are listed as the Earl of Antrim’s British Tenants. In 1637 John McMurtry leased some land in Co. Antrim for 20 years. A generation later, in 1667, an Archibald McMurthy is mentioned in a Co. Antrim deed. In 1669, the Hearth Money Roll Index lists a John McMurtrey in the Scotch Quarter of Carrickfergus and a Gilbert McMurtry in Ballypollard. There are also 5 McMurtys listed in various parts of Antrim and it is hard to know when a McMurty is a McMurty and when McMurty is a misspelling of McMurtry.

While many McMurtrys were Presbyterians, there were a number of Anglican families in both Carrick and Ulster.  There were McMurtrys and MacMurtries of various spellings in Ayrshire, Scotland as early as 1535 and they were numerous in the parish registers of the 1600s and early 1700s in the Girvan Valley of Carrick, Ayrshire. Like many families, it’s reasonable to assume that many McMurtrys migrated from southwest Scotland either as part of the the Earl of Antrim's Dunluce settlement, the larger Plantation of Ulster, or during the conflicts between the Covenanters and government troops.

Other periods of migration likely occurred at various times as part of the natural cross-migration from the Isle of Bute to Antrim over the centuries. Stewarts, McCurdys and most likely McMurtrys found safe haven on the shores of Antrim in troublesome times such as 1602 when Archibald Macalister and his men raided Bute and wreaked havoc with over 1200 men.

Presence in 1700s and early 1800s

In the 1700s and early 1800s, there are a dozen or so isolated references to McMurtrys. But, except for the Matthew McMurtry of Island Magee whose descendants we have traced down to the present day, we have not been able to connect these individuals to the current generation. The references include: Andrew McMurtry of Dunagor in 1731, Thomas McMurtrie in Dublin in 1754, a Thomas McMurtry of Ballywilliam in 1758, Thomas' son John McMurtry in Ballywilliam, Comber, Co. Down in 1782, James McMurtry in Kilroot, Co. Antrim in 1809, Mathew McMurtry of Island Magee in 1813, Margaret McMoutray of Ballyclare in 1827, John McMurtry of Belfast 1836, Alexander McMortrey of Cluntifinan in 1838.

Presence by mid-1800s

We can get a picture of the family in the mid 1800s by synthesizing various records the Tithes (1826-1838), Griffith's Valuation, the Civil Registration of Marriages, and Deaths and Births (begun in 1864), and miscellaneous wills and census records in the Hamilton Papers in the Public Record Office. This shows the McMurtrys clustered heavily in the southeast corner of Co. Antrim, the eastern end of Co. Londonderry near the Antrim border, and in a few locations in Co. Down.

In Co. Antrim, we see McMurtrys in southeast Antrim in the parishes of Island Magee, Larne, Glynn, Raloo, Kilroot, Templecorran, Carrickfergus, Ballynure, Ballylinny. In Co. Londonderry (Co. Derry hereafter), we see them in Coleraine (Boghill), Aghadowey (Drumsteeple, Crossmakeever, and Lisnamuck), Agivey (Ree), Mascoquin (Ballyness, Curragh, Castleroe, Letterloan and Coolyvenny). In Co. Down, there are references in Newtownards.

There was also an Antrim family living Co. Carlow and Co. Tipperary operating mills during this period. The DNA signature of this family was one of the more surprising of the McMurtry DNA Project in that it closely matched one of the immigrant families to the USA in the 1700s.

McMurtry DNA Project

The DNA results include samples of 28 individuals in 18 families – 13 families of Irish origin and 5 of Scottish origin. All but one of the Irish samples were Haplogroup R1b. The members of R1b are believed to be the descendants of the first modern humans who entered Europe about 35,000-40,000 years ago. Those R1b forebearers were the people who painted the beautiful art in the caves in Spain and France. R1b is the most common Y haplogroup in Europe - more than half of men of European descent belong to R1b.

The McMurtry samples can be divided into three patterns: one characteristic of the Co. Derry families, one characteristic of the Co. Antrim families (shared with a few of the Ayrshire Scotland families), and one characteristic of three of the Ayrshire, Scotland families.

The Co. Derry signature and the Co. Antrim signature differ from each other on 3 to 5 markers and present a genetic distance of 5 to 7. There may or may not be a common ancestor. If there is a common ancestor, it would have to be 200 years or perhaps more before the McMurtrys came to America in the early 1700s. The fact that some of the differences are on rapidly-mutating markers makes interpretation more challenging. These two signatures may represent different geographical origins, historical immigration differences or just individual family differences. Whatever the case, both Ulster signatures match the Irish Modal Haplotype on all of the key markers.

These Ulster families are a genetic distance of 13-15 from the Scottish signature indicating the Co. Derry and Co. Antrim families do not share a common ancestor with the Ayrshire McMurtry / McMurtrie families that carry the Scotttish signature.

Distribution Today

Some descendants of these various families still live not far from their ancestors’ homes and others have spread around the globe to the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and England.

In 1990, there were about 50 McMurtrys listed in the Irish phone books. They reside mainly in Co Antrim, a smaller number live in Co Derry, a few in Co. Down, and a few in Dublin.

Migrations from Ulster

Around or shortly after 1735, three brothers, Joseph, Robert and Thomas McMurtry came to Sussex and Somerset County, New Jersey. A contemporary of these brothers is an Alexander McMurtry known to be in nearby Hunterdon County, New Jersey by 1747. Two hundred miles to the southwest, in Augusta Co., Virginia, a different Alexander McMurtry, left two orphan sons, Samuel and John, born in the late 1740s. DNA shows these all to share a common Co. Antrim ancestor though the Augusta Co. Virginia McM have a genetic distance of 2 from the New Jersey McM.

Several hundred miles to the south, a William McMurtrey came to South Carolina in 1777 from Larne aboard the “Lord Dunluce” and some of his fellow travelers left a record of the travail of the ship passage.

One McMurtrie family of Co. Down with an Antrim DNA signature migrated to Wigtonshire, Scotland around 1802.

Another set of migrations occurred in period after 1820, but this time with a Canadian destination. A William McMurtry, a miller by profession, in 1822 secured a letter of commendation from John Alexander, a wealthy mill owner in Milford, Co. Carlow, for whom William worked for 20 years. William subsequently settled in Bowmanville, Ontario where his son John established his own milling operations. Correspondence between John McMurtry and his cousin, Samuel, who remained in Milford, established they had mutual aunts residing in Belfast, and an uncle Thomas McMurtry, whose sons would later settle in Chicago (see below). The Co. Antrim DNA signature from this family was surprisingly close to both the Virginia and New Jersey families previously mentioned.

Meanwhile, a family with a Co. Derry DNA signature arrived in March Township, near present day Ottawa in the early 1820s. James and John McMurtry likely migrated from (or near) Ardtrea Parrish on the Co. Derry / Co. Tyrone border. W.J. McMurtry, a grandson of James, made his fortune in the Ottawa Valley lumber industry before moving the family to Toronto where he founded a well known furniture company. One of W.J.’s grandsons served as Ontario Attorney General, then Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and then Chief Justice of Ontario.

Not all emigrants during this period went to Canada. In 1828, a Thomas McMurtray of the Ballylinny, Co. Antrim family went to Missouri, USA and his nephew Matthew McMurtry went to Illinois. In 1841, another Thomas McMurtry married in New Brunswick, Canada, went back to Ireland, then settled in Illinois, USA after 1859. About 1845, Randall McMurtry of Island Magee migrated to London and from there his descendants went on to Australia and eventually New Zealand.

Some of the Raloo family (brothers William, Andrew and James) migrated to New York state around 1850. A John McMurtry born 1805 and wife Ann Diensmore of Kilrea, Co. Tyrone, came to New Brunswick about 1847, and descendants settled in Nova Scotia.

Around 1850, three brothers George Gibson, John Gibson, and Alexander of the Co. Antrim/Co. Tipperary/Co. Down/Co. Carlow family settled in Chicago, Illinois, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. George McMurtry founded a steel company and operated the company town of Vandergrift Pennsylvania. John McMurtry had a son who founded a large hardware store chain in the western states of America.

One of George McMurtry’s descendants hired an English genealogy firm to dig into the Irish records prior to their destruction during the 1922 Civil War. They preserved McMurtry extracts from the censuses of 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 in several parishes of Antrim and one in Tipperary. They also discovered records that linked this family to a family of McMurtrys in Cardross, in Dunbartonshire, Scotland in the late 1600s to late 1700s, though the original documents upon which these links are based has not been found and no corroboration of the assertions of the article have been found in public records. There is a chance that some of this early history was a fabrication or a confusion by the author of the article.

For more detailed information about the McMurtrys throughout the world, see the MacMurtrie Clan Family Records website at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mcmurtriecfr/

And the McMurtry Archives at:

Http://www.muircheartaigh.org