The Origins of the McMurtries/McMurtry Families

April 2009

Ten thousand years ago, during a period of global warming, the ice sheets that covered all of the British Isles melted. The areas of the northern hemisphere under perpetual winter were reduced to the Artic and near Artic areas we now associate with the year-long expanses of snow and ice.

Then, into the British Isles from Europe, came the waves of migration that continued up until medieval times. In these waves came the ancestors of the McMurtries/trys.

Based on genetic evidence, the ancestors of those first migrants go back 150,000 years to a spot in northeast Africa. By 50,000 years ago, their descendants had moved north to the Middle East and by 30,000 years had spread north to the area that is now Eastern Europe. From there, they spread north and west to what became Russia and Western Europe, waiting for the end of the Ice Age move into Britain.

Origin of the Name

The name McMurtrie/try is derived from the Gaelic name "Muircheartach". This originally was a boy's first name, but gradually came to be used as a last name. "Muir" means "sea" and "cheartach" means "ruler"or “navigator”; so, MacMuircheartch seems to be, liberally translated, "son of a sea ruler" or "son of a navigator".

This Gaelic name appears in both Scotland and Ireland in ancient and medieval times. However, the ancestors of the McMurtries alive today appear to have originated in Scotland by the 1500s and spread to Ireland in the 1600s and taking the form McMurtry.

Several notable Scottish clan historians indicate that McMurtrie is a Sept of Clan Stuart of Bute in Argyllshire. This seems to have been based on the prominence of the Muircheartach/Muircheartaigh family in Bute from early times.  By the 1400s, the family had anglicized their name to McMurquhy, Makwarrarty, Makmurrarty, Makwarrathy, M'Wartye, McQuerdy and McKirdie and become barons of the entire Isle of Bute. The Stuart family gradually bought up all the lands of Bute and the Muircheartiagh descendants disbursed elsewhere.  It appears a number of Muircheartiagh families left Bute for Gaelic-speaking Carrick in north Galloway where the name appears in early forms as Makmurtye and Makmurtre. However, we find few mentions of the name in its current form on Bute given further migrations to Antrim in the 17th century. 

Appearance of the Name

In any event, the first mention of the name in official records was in 1538, when a Robert Makmurtre is listed as occupying the farm of Bailleballoch (which is Gaelic for "farm in the pass"), in what became Barr Parish, Ayrshire, Scotland. The first mention of the name in its modern spelling is in a estate document for a Thomas McMurtrie who died in 1592 in Culzean, in what became Maybole parish, 4 or 5 miles west of Maybole village.

So by the 1500s, our family extended from Barr in the south to Maybole in the north and, despite so few references, probably was widespread throughout this area since only a small portion of the population made it into public records in that era.

By the 1600s, we find the family in both Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland, we find references in Kirkmichael in 1607, Girvan 1608, Straiton in 1626, Maybole in 1630 and further north in Kilmarnock in 1652 and Ochiltree in 1671. So by the later 1600s, the family had moved beyond its origins in the Maybole to Barr area.

The map of Ayrshire shows with the large circle the area where McMurtries were concentrated – from earliest appearances in the 1500s in Maybole and Barr to appearances in the 1600s in the parishes of Maybole, Kirkoswald, Dailly, Girvan, Barr, Kirkmichael, Straiton –and shows with the smaller circle, the area of Kilmarnock where a few isolated families lived in the mid-1600s. By the early 1700s, we find them most prolificly in Maybole, Kirkoswald, Kirkmichael and Dailly and beginning to appear also in Dalmellington and Ayr and a few families appear in Glasgow.

In Ireland, in the 1600s, we have references to McMurtrys of various spellings in Dunluce in northwest Co Antrim (1630), in Carrickfergus and elsewhere in southeast Co Antrim in 1669.

In the early 1700s, we find the McMurtrys in various parishes of southeast Co Antrim and in 1759 in eastern Co Derry.

Genetic analysis shows that the McMurtrys of Ireland share common ancestors with the McMurtries of Scotland. The McMurtrys of Co Antrim, Ireland (including those who came to New Jersey and Virginia in America in the 1730s) share a common ancestor with most of the families that lived between Maybole and Barr in Ayrshire. The McMurtrys of Co Derry, Ireland share a common ancestor with just two families in Ayrshire – one dating from the early 1700s in Dailly Parish and one dating from the late 1700s in northern Kirkmichael Parish. All other McMurtries share a common ancestor with the McMurtries who appear in Dalmellington, Ayrshire in the early 1700s.

We conclude that one of more families left Ayshire and came to Co Antrim in Ireland in the early 1600s. Then in the early 1700s, two families descended from these Ayrshire immigrants, perhaps close cousins and possibly descended from the earliest immigrants, migrated to New Jersey and Virginia in America. Meanwhile, during this time between the early 1600s and early 1700s, there was a branch of the family that became the ancestor of almost all the McMurtry families that live in Co Antrim today.

Unrelated in modern times to the Ayrshrie/Antrim McM are the McM of Co Derry. We suspect that the arrival of McMurtrys in Co Derry may have come later than the settlement in Antrim. The first record we have of the McMurtrys there is in 1759 when a Thomas McMurtry appeared on a tenants list. Based on genetics, all of the McMurtrys of Co Derry seem to have been descended from the same individual; this Thomas of 1759 might have been that individual. Because of the fact that there is only one family in Scotland today with the genetic pattern of the Co Derry McMurtrys, we suspect that the ancestors of this McMurtrie family in southern Dailly Parish in Ayrshire are the ancestors of the Co Derry McMurtrys.

Unrelated to either the Ayrshire/Antrim or the Ayrshire/Derry McM are the Dalmellington McMurtries who appear there in the early 1700. Because of the absence of parish registers for Dalmellington in the 1600s, we do not know if they emerged there or migrated there from elsewhere. There are branches of this family in northern Kirkmichael Parish by 1781 and in Maybole parish by 1792 who are closely related to each other, but we have not found parish register entries that link these families with families from Dalmellington. The connection remains a mystery!

The McMurtries and the McMurtrys have since these early origins spread over the face of the entire globe - with kin now in Canada, USA, England, New Zealand, Australia, south Asia as well as Scotland and Ireland.