In July 2023, I was approached by Dominic Gagnon about involving Group 2 Farrells (the Farrell’s of Annaly, Longford) in a study that aims to explore the connection between several supposedly related clans, namely those with the surname Farrell, Reynolds, Shanley, and Mulvey, among others. Iain McDonald will be involved in calculating TMRCA estimates using his comprehensive methodology (1) which will hopefully give more accurate estimates than those provided by FTDNA. Both Dominic and Iain have recently been made temporary co-administrators of the Farrell DNA Project to help facilitate the study. Below, Dominic and Iain give a description of the study, what it hopes to achieve, and how you can get involved. And at the end of this post is a diagram illustrating how the various Conmaicne families/clans are reportedly related.
Maurice Gleeson
Oct 2023
Since 2018, I have been a project administrator for the Quebec yDNA and French Heritage projects. During this time, we were able to confirm several French Canadian pionneer's Y-DNA and mtDNA back to the late 1500s and early 1600s, thanks to the extensive Canadian Catholic indexed-archives. (2)
In late 2020, I came into contact with a man called Daniel Girard who wanted to trace his French-Canadian paternal line back to France, and find out where in France it originated. We both were completely surprised when the results came back; Daniel Girard’s Y-DNA did not go back to France, it went back to Ireland, and was a match to men called Reynolds. We then understood that the pioneer's father, Cornelius Renelle, based in St-Germain en Laye (near Paris), was one of the Wild Geese - a Reynolds refugee from 1690. The original surname had switched to Girard in the mid-1700s in Montreal. (3)
This is how I first got interested in the deeper origins of the Reynolds surname, and its relation to the Mulvey, Shanley and Farrell clans, since those names all came up as matches in our Girard/Renelle BigY results.
I was put in contact with Ray Murta from the R-Z253 project and he explained to me how the Reynolds and Farrell surnames originated from the same Conmaicne group of clans, in and around counties Leitrim and Longford. He could see that the genetics were pointing to a close relation, as told in 19h century genealogical works from Richard F. Cronnelly and John O'Hart. (4,5)
A survey of this literature, with some medieval Annals, (6) helped me to organize this common origin into a basic family tree and I contacted Iain McDonald to see if he was interested in applying his combined formula (using data from SNPs, STRs, genealogies & ancient DNA), as we had done together in the Verdun/Haviland study in 2021. (7) The goal would be to get better estimates so as to define the true relation in time, between the Reynolds and Farrell. This genetic family tree (with optimal TMRCA estimates) could then be compared against the genealogical family tree (based on the medieval genealogies) to explore consistencies and inconsistencies in the structure of both trees and the various branching points within them.
I assembled 23 volunteers from among Reynolds, Mulvey and Shanley project members in the Quebec yDNA project and so far I have received consent from 13 of them to use the VCF files associated with their Big Y results (the format we need in order to apply the combined analysis using Iain’s methodology).
Maurice Gleeson and Bart Jaski also agreed to get involved. Maurice is administrator of the Farrell DNA Project and Bart is one of the foremost experts on the ancient Irish genealogies. (8) Bart’s expertise will be invaluable when we come to writing up the study for publication in a scientific journal.
I am excited to work on this study with members of the Farrell DNA Project and I am more than happy to answer any questions (either via email or in the comments section below).
Dominic Gagnon
Oct 2023
Since 2013, I have been working on estimating the TMRCAs that Dominic mentions above. In that time, we have seen testing move from Y-STRs to BigY and now BigY-700, and there have been improvements and complications to go with these TMRCA estimates that have been part and parcel of that.
In 2020, I got the opportunity to work directly with Family Tree DNA on TMRCA estimation. The result of that visit can now be seen in Family Tree DNA’s Discover project. However, this is not the best we can do with TMRCAs.
In 2021, I published a new method to more accurately assess TMRCAs (1), which is similar to Family Tree DNA’s implementation, but makes a few improvements, such as individual treatment of Y-STRs. The most important factor it can take into account, however, are genealogies. This allows us not only to prove long genealogical trees by using TMRCAs from Y-DNA testing, but also use confirmed genealogies to more closely estimate the age of haplogroups much further back in the tree. It’s my hope that, by being involved in this and similar works with Dominic and Maurice, we can produce a much more accurate picture of what happened in the days before the existence of the Farrell family.
To perform this more accurate assessment, I need data from the project and its members. This comes both in the form of genealogies, and the raw data from BigY tests (in VCF format). This allows me to look at quality data for individual mutations and the coverage of each test, which are necessary input parameters for an accurate TMRCA assessment. The more of you are happy to share this data, the more accurate and precise the result will be.
Iain McDonald
Oct 2023
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| A simplified "family tree" showing how Conmaicne surnames are reported to be related |
Sources & Links
McDonald, I. Improved Models of Coalescence Ages of Y-DNA Haplogroups. Genes 2021, 12, 862. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12060862
See the Catalogue des Signatures ADN/DNA Signatures Catalogue, https://www.francogene.com/triangulation/
See https://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/genealogie-personal-info.aspx?pid=112644&information=Jacques%20Girard
Richard Francis Cronnelly (1864). Irish Family History (Parts I & II). Available from https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Irish_Family_History_being_an_historical/ZLFXAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
John O Hart (1892). Irish Pedigrees; or The Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation. Available from https://www.libraryireland.com/Pedigrees1/index.php
For the genealogy of the Conmaicne, see how Muintir Eolais is said to be at the head of the MacRannalls (Bibhsach), compared to Emin (father of Angaile and Farrell), in the Book of Fenagh p. 385 https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Hennessy_and_Kelly_1875
For a definition of Muintir: p. 552 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t4xg9w70d&view=1up&seq=552&q1=Eolus
Note: The Book of Fenagh (1516) took from earlier Annals the Conmaicne genealogy. Earlier genealogies are found in the Annals of Connacht and Ulster. See tables 74 and 75 from Bart Jaski: Genealogical tables of medieval Irish royal dynasties | Bart Jaski - Academia.edu. The Book of Fenagh is still important because it follows closely the Mag Raghnaill lordship down to the 1500s, and how contending neighbouring powers (O’Rourke, O’Donnell) “involved themselves” in the Leitrim/Muintir Eolais politics. The way the Mag Raghnaill lordship faded by the 15th century is important in order to understand how its genealogy might have split into different sub-branches afterwards (one leaving Longford); Making the Book of Fenagh: Context and text. Edited by Raymond Gillespie, Salvador Ryan and Brendan Scott, Cumann Seanchais Bhreifne, 2016
The Common Norman Ancestor to the Verdun, Haviland and Battaglia Families, Gagnon D. et al., Foundations (2022) 15: 64-85 ... see https://fmg.ac/publications/journal/vol-15
Bart’s bibliography is available at https://uu.academia.edu/BartJaski
