2023 Update on the Kilcoyne Project

   The Kilcoyne Y-DNA Project has grown significantly since its founding several years back. The group was initially founded by a Coyne researcher who tested several individuals, now totaling 22 tested. These Coyne  men make up nine paternally unrelated groups. These families tested have no connection to any Kilcoyne groups. I took the Project over three years ago, volunteering my time to it's development. With my primary focus being on Kilcoyne lineages. 

 The Kilcoyne's make up ten unrelated groups with fifty seven testers. Unrelated meaning not sharing a common male ancestor within the last few thousand years. The Kilcoyne's have a diverse testing pool with 40% being Irish and English born testers, all the others being American. Some surname variants found so far for the Kilcoyne's are to Coen, Coyle, and Doyle. The lone Doyle tester likely being a descendant of a Coyle man. Of the ten groups, four of these make up most of the testing database. 

The testing of the male inherited Y chromosome is the tool used for this study. The Y passes from father to son relatively unchanged, until the line dies or daughters out. The Y test allows us to reach far back into time, in excess of 300k years. So we can determine not only our ancient roots and where our ancestors traveled to, but also allows us to reconstruct our family trees within the last several hundred years using variants known as SNPs (singe nucleotide polymorphisms). These SNPs occur randomly in our male ancestors, that creates unique branches or haplogroups,  which allows us to create a genetic tree. These SNPs are only found by using the BigY700 test, the most expensive of the three kits available at FTDNA. The Y-37 kit is very affordable and can be used for placement into a specific group in the project. The Y-37 is a good starter kit to get your family matched in. 

 BigY700 SNP tree example

In each of the four primary groups, matching to the Coyle's occurs. These events can be dated back to the 1600s. This must be due to to the English language replacing the native Irish that started during this time. Over time and as people move, language and accents change, and surnames evolve too.

You can contribute to our active study by recruiting a male in the family that carries the surname for Y-DNA testing. The private information of testers and names of living people are protected. We still have much to learn on our family and the surname. There are many lineages out there scattered in the world that are not tested yet. Testing will allow the family to trace their ancestry back to their native parish in Co Mayo or Co Sligo in the 19th century. This is possible due to the fifty seven Kilcoyne testers already in the database and having their earliest known locations documented.  I have amassed most Kilcoyne trees known, so if the individual tests, I can easily place the testers family in a specific parish or very close by it. If a family does not have a male tester, I suggest using ancestry.com 's test for a basic DNA test that produces an ethnicity reading, but more importantly matching to other Kilcoynes 

Regards 

Michael Crow 

Understanding the Kilcoyne DNA Project

 There are several types of DNA testing. The two that are used for our Kilcoyne Study is the male only Y-DNA test and the autosomal DNA test. The autosomal test can be found on sites like ancestry, My Heritage, 23 and Me , and several others. It is recommended you test with Ancestry, because they have the largest database, and you can transfer your DNA file from ancestry to several other testing sites for free if you wish to. This test is wonderful for family matching within 200 years. The male only Y-DNA test looks only at the male inherited Y-Chromosome. The Y is passed from father to son relatively unchanged from generation to generation. Going back all the way to "Genetic Adam" a few hundred thousand years ago. There are occasional mutations along the Y that occur in specific men called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) and short tandem repeats (STRs)  These mutations allow us to track our ancestors through time. It is unknown to Science why these mutations occur, they are essentially evolutionarily hiccups.

 The Haplotree, also called the Tree of Mankind, has 60k branches on it compiled from YDNA testers on sites like Family Tree DNA and several others. DNA that is sequenced from archeological sites are also included on the Haplotree. YDNA is essentially a time machine that allows us to see where in the world our male ancestors came from and migrated to. The mutations are also valuable in our family trees  within the last few hundred years. Through advanced testing of specific lineages, I have found specific mutations in named men in our family trees. Valuable because we can place a tester on a specific farm where the mutation was created.  

FTDNA is the oldest site and also has surname projects that you can join and is home to our Kilcoyne YDNA Project that I administer. Through this site and our Facebook group I have been able to recruit several dozen Kilcoyne men for Y-DNA testing. I have discovered ten  paternally unrelated Kilcoyne families in the west of Ireland. I believe there are four primary Kilcoyne families with the other six  making up non paternal events through adoption, females passing their Kilcoyne surname onto their child, or by other means. Having established these groups using YDNA , it is relatively easy to find which parish your Kilcoyne family came from. I have connected several families from America and England to their ancestral parishes in Mayo and Sligo. It is a very powerful tool we have at our disposal to reconnect our family trees. Many of us know how difficult it is to research our Irish family tree due to the limits of paper genealogy. 

Here is an example of the Tubbercury-Kilcoynes genetic history traced back to central Africa 200k years ago. The SNPS here listed like R-L21  are actual men in our tree. Traced to these locations through all YDNA testing to date. 

Here is the map I created with all the Kilcoyne YDNA testers to date. I base the pins on the earliest known 19th century  ancestor of the tester. Testing your families Kilcoyne YDNA can easily connect you to one of these groups

 

The Blue Group- Overview

The  Y-DNA test only explores the paternal line, and it can therefore be used to locate one’s direct male ancestors to specific locations at specific time points in history. Moreover, the surnames of one’s Y-DNA revealed genetic relatives can reveal clues to his ancestors ‘ethnicity’ at each specific location and timepoint. For example, one’s Y-DNA revealed 12 marker matches reflect shared ancestry from potentially many thousands of years ago, and when one matches Central European French and German surnames from that timeframe it indicates a Celtic/Gaulish origin. As the STR markers are increased to 67 and 111 markers, the prefix Mac begins to appear and suggests Gaelic roots in Scotland and Ireland in the last 1-2k years. This is the case for the "Blue" Kilcoynes. This family tested positive for the ancient I-M223 SNP. If your YDNA haplogroup comes back as I-M223 then your paternal line will lead back to one of two groups; one within the West of Ireland and another whose Y-DNA signature spans Southeast Ulster and neighboring Southwest Scotland. I-M223 is dominated by surnames like Dougherty, McGuinness and O'Neil , all prevalent in the South County Down area. 

Through advanced YDNA testing using the BigY700 test, we reach into the modern era using SNP mutations that can be more accurately dated. This test has made some amazing discoveries for us. We can date the surname use  to 6-800 years. This family is the oldest found of the 11 paternally unrelated Kilcoyne families in the west of Ireland, and possibly the founding Kilcoyne family. It's possible each of the other Kilcoyne groups have branched off the Blue through "non paternal events" or females' passing their surnames onto their children. We have discovered 4 genetic branches for this family that we call a genetic subclade, all dated within 800 years. This is an achievement, because surnames have been used in Ireland going back 1000 years. Haplogroup I-FT418455 is about 800 years old, created in the common ancestor for this family somewhere in Mayo or Sligo. There are two defining branches that make up this family. FTA11172 was created in or near Louisburg, Mayo about 400 years ago. This man cannot be named but he certainly carried the Kilcoyne surname. Sometime 400 years ago, a man began using the surname Coyle in this branch, likely the result of confusion over translation of the surname. This matches the time frame when names began being  anglicized in Ireland. The other haplogroup, I-FT418169 was created in or near the parish of Ballymote, Sligo in a unnamed man about 400 years ago. We can see that the surname  was corrupted in Sligo at some point in the past in at least one family resulting in the name Coen being used. . What we can tell is that one Kilcoyne man left either Ballymote or Louisburg 400 years ago and settled in an unfamiliar land. We can only speculate why this man left his native farm and land, but it was likely due to some unfortunate circumstance of war or a better opportunity to work more land. 

Many of the Louisburg branch began leaving Mayo in the 1880s. Common destinations were the ports of Quebec, Boston, and Pennsylvania. Some Pennsylvania arrivals traveled to the Midwest, where many still are. While the Boston arrivals settled in the town of Clinton, where many Irish migrants settled. The Quebec arrivals ended up settling in upstate New York. The common ancestor for this branch can be dated back 2-250 years ago. That common ancestors name cannot be determined. In fact, none of the Blue family can be connected on paper, we simply know of the connection via genetic genealogy.  So these families are now in excess of 4th cousins. The Sligo branch has opted for migration to England, and I have seen less travels to the states from this family. The same case for the Sligo branch has played out, none can be connected on paper. 

Thanks to YDNA and the cooperation of many scattered throughout Ireland , England and the States, we can piece this families history back together. It took several thousand dollars from this family and a bit of cooperation with me to make it happen. So fair play to the Blues 

2021 Year in Review for the Kilcoyne YDNA Project

 Another year has come and gone. 2021 was a very productive year. Thanks to all  those who have contributed in any fashion to the study. 

Important milestones and discoveries have been made through the use of the BigY700 DNA test. This high resolution kit has allowed me to find genetic branches in our ancestors that were created in the time that we can trace our ancestors on paper. This has allowed the diaspora to trace their roots back to their ancestral parishes in Ireland. And has allowed me to genetically map our paternal migrations into Ireland with pretty accurate time estimates. 

There are now 11 families that are unrelated to each other on the male line. Some testers are left off of the map due to having the same parish pinned by their cousins. All of our groups are of Gaelic origins, and have been in Ireland for possibly several thousand years. We have nearly 50 testers now with about 50% of them being English or Irish based. This is quite the feat for an American Project administrator  on FTDNA ! Thanks to all for trusting me and assisting this study. 

The Gold family from  Tubbercurry

This family is the largest Kilcoyne group with 11 testers. This is probably because this is my branch and there is testing bias because of it. I have found 3 genetic branches that were formed at specific addresses in the area. This a tremendous success because Kilcoynes in the diaspora can simply test and find their exact roots in their native parishes, and in some cases can be tied back to a specific farm from the 19th century!

This group has definite links to the Coyle family from Donegal about 400 years ago. My theory is that the family were originally Coyles but the name changed to Kilcoyne upon their arrival in South Sligo in the last 3-400 years. Below is the migration out of Africa for this family. These Kilcoynes entered Ireland during the Iron age . You can type in FT308088 and look more closely at the genetic mutation and the ancient skeletons we are related to here http://scaledinnovation.com/gg/snpTracker.html 

The Light Blue family from Achill 

There are 7 testers now for this group. For several years I had noticed autosomal DNA links between the Gold family to this group. It had perplexed me until a family from Shanvallyhue, Mayo told me that it was passed down in their family that two Kilcoyne men left Tubbercury in the early 19th century for Achill. I strongly suspect that the Tubbercurry and Achill Kilcoynes are cousins, but their was a break in the Achill Y Chromosome sometime before 1800ad. Its possible a child took the name of his step father or took his mothers surname. This might explain all the DNA links but no match to the Y Chromosome . So this Achill family was likely in Sligo before their migration westward in the early 19th century. This group has matching to the Coyles as well, but more testing is needed to decipher when the common ancestor was. This family is R-FT18311, but is not yet added to the Tree of Mankind because of its recent discovery. I will share that map and info in our Facebook group when its added 

The Blue family of Louisburg, Mayo and Ballymote, Sligo

This is a real interesting group. It is my belief this is the founding Kilcoyne family. All the testers in this group were from the Louisburg area until a Kilcoyne man with Ballymote roots tested into them. I can see through genetic mutations that the common link could be 800 years back! Surnames started to be used in Ireland back 1000 years ago all the way up to the 1600s, so this is pretty incredible to have found this link. It is likely the Louisburg family moved westward towards the coast in the last several hundred years. The Blue family also has YDNA connections to the Coyle's back about 400 years ago. This family is R-FTA37584

These 3 groups are the primary ones that have the most testers. Some of the eight others are in fact Kilcoynes, but had a break in their Y Chromosome at some point. I have found that in at least two groups, a female passed her surname onto her son, resulting in the son carrying a Y chromosome from his non Kilcoyne father. More testing is needed to determine if the other groups are simply undertested, or they branch off one of the three primary families 

There are four Kilcoyne groups that have links to the Coyle's. As our testers began upgrading their kits to the BigY700, it became clear that these names were easily confused when surnames began being anglicized in the 1600s. I have never seen or read about any possible link, so this development  was surprising. I hope to recruit more Coyle's to gain more understanding between the links. 

I still have not found any link from the Kilcoynes to the Coyne's. Just recently we had a Coyne man test with roots in Kilmactigue, Sligo. His ancestor farmed the same lands as the Kilcoynes in the 19th century, but he did not match to any of our group's. I know there must be some Coyne's out there carrying a Kilcoyne Y chromosome, but as this stage I think its an exception and not the rule 

We have nearly 400 Facebook followers in 6 countries. Continue to share with family to generate more interest.  We are always looking for more YDNA and Autosomal DNA testers! In the early days of this Project, I had several people donate to the Kilcoyne fund to return a favor to me.  We do accept donations if you are able to help advance the study. I can think of several men in every group that want to upgrade their kits, but cannot due to the cost. If you have a specific interest in a certain family, just let me know and I can direct that money to the right kit. 

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/kilcoyne/about

If there is anyone looking to buy a BigY700 DNA kit for another family line, I'd be glad to help decipher that  info . Feel free to reach to out 

Happy Christmas to all 

Michael 

mikec1120@comcast.net 

CONNECTING THE ACHILL AND SLIGO FAMILY

    A remarkable discovery has been made that may have connected the Kilcoyne's from Sligo to the Kilcoyne's from the Achill area. We know through our YDNA study that these two families do not have a shared founding male Kilcoyne ancestor, but through other DNA evidence and family word of mouth, we can put the original founding Achill Kilcoyne man in Tubbercurry, Sligo. It had long perplexed me that many of the Sligo family DNA matched on the autosomes to the Achill family. Many DNA testers from both of these families  have given me access to their kits. Time and time again I saw distant matching between these two families. Particularly to those from Rosturk. Each time I YDNA tested a new Achill Kilcoyne, I expected a possible link to Sligo on the male line, but it just never happened. 

The two groups YDNA testers mapped here . Light Blue and Gold

I spoke to a family from Sanvallyhugh, Burrishoole, Mayo, who provided me evidence that  their ancestor and his brother were born in Tubbercurry, and had made it to Shanvallyhugh by 1823. When I YDNA tested this family, I was disappointed that this family was not matched to my branch from Tubbercurry, but in fact matched to the other Achill testers. To me, there is clear evidence from the autosomal YDNA kits that there must be a connection somehow. In my view. it is likely  that their was a break in the line from these two families. This likely occurred pre 1800. These "breaks" are very common in every one of our family lines. Experts estimate it happens 50% of the time in each of our family branches. The most common breaks occur when a female with young children is widowed, remarries and the children assume the surname of their step-father. Another possibility is that a young female passed her surname onto her child. This is seen with some frequency in 19th century records. Often times we want to avoid family stories like this. The  stigma is stuck in our heads. But the fact of the matter is our ancestors had difficult lives and often times just needed to survive. Their complicated family life is much the same as we have in our own families today.

In the Light Blue group from Achill, nearly all the testers have John or Martin who were born around 1800. 

These are the Achill  testers in our Project, showing John and Martin, the others earliest known ancestors of these testers were born post 1840, so they are likely children and grandchildren of these two men

It is my belief that all descendants of the Achill family are descendants of Martin and John, both born in Tubbercury, Sligo in the early 1800s. We have 5 paternally unrelated Kilcoyne groups from the Sligo area, but I believe the Gold from Tubercurry are the Achill families cousins, based on the autosomal DNA tests. 

Here is the family tree provided by the Shanvallyhugh family that tested into the Achill group. It was passed down through the generations to this family that the founding ancestor was from Tubercurry, as seen on the top left. 

Moving forward we have the opportunity to further cement this finding in our study. The Achill family has provided enormous help in YDNA testing thus far , but this family is still undertested. If I can at least get two men from the existing group to upgrade their kits to the BigY700, I can potentially prove that all the Achill family do indeed descend from these two men. I can do this by dating the surname by seeing the mutations on the Y chromosome through the Bigy700 test. 

The existing testers could use some help. If interested in helping move this  along, please donate to this link and label your contribution to the Achill family  

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/kilcoyne/about

Michael Crow

mikec1120@comcast.net

Project administrator 

 

How to Help the Kilcoyne Family Study

My work in the Kilcoyne Project has focused on the use of Y-DNA. This specialized test is different than the at home commercial DNA test you have surely heard of. Both tests are extremely useful. Y-DNA is wonderful for matching just the male Y chromosome to others in terms of thousands of years. The autosomal DNA test looks at the 22 autosomes and is great for family matching going back six or so generations. This is the test that reads all your family's lines. 

Many have tested their Y chromosome with our Kilcoyne Y-DNA Project on Family Tree DNA. The issue many of you have is that you do not have a male relative that carries the the surname Kilcoyne for Y-DNA testing. Or that the cost of the more expensive Y-DNA test is out of your financial reach. This is where the autosomal test can help our study. On sale, the autosomal test typical runs between 59.00 and 79.00 US dollars. The next big sale runs in November. Even if a family member has already tested, it is still worth testing yourself. This is because we all inherit different genes from our parents and ancestors. Lets say you and brother test, but your brother has more Kilcoyne matches than you and has a slightly different ethnicity reading, this is not because the test is incorrect, it is because you simply inherited slightly different segments of DNA during the DNA recombination process. 

I'll list here some step's on how to move forward with testing. This is the best path forward financially speaking to get the most out of your money.

1. Test with https://www.ancestry.com/. This company has a good ethnicity reading but more importantly, a very large database of testers. The last count I saw was in excess of 20 million people. 

Once you receive your ancestry result in a month or so time, you then can upload your DNA to several other sites for free. Some companies require a fee to unlocking your ethnicity reading, but you will be able to view your cousins list for free. You do not have to  spend the money on unlocking the reading if you are not interested. 

2. Upload your ancestry DNA and upload it https://www.myheritage.com/dna. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqhTn4NBvkU

3. Upload your ancestry DNA and upload it to FTDNA. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0v_cJvgtuI

4. Upload your ancestry DNA  to https://www.gedmatch.com/ . This site is import because you can view the actual segments of DNA you share with others. Very important for the chromosome mapping tool many of us more serious researchers use for identifying matches in our quest to rebuild the family tree. Once you have uploaded to Gedmatch, you can then join the Kilcoyne ancestor project that I manage there. We have several dozen members joined there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80VsX1hTTPk&t=375s

5. Ensure to build out a family tree on ancestry and make it public. You can then upload your tree to other sites. It is important to fill out the tree the best you can, you can do this without purchasing a membership. If you just testing for your own curiosity and to help this study, then make sure you do not get roped into a monthly payment. 

If you follow these steps, this would be extremely  helpful to further our Project. You will also save quite a bit of money. For the price of one kit, you will have access to four databases of users in excess of 30 million testers. Each company also has different algorithms they use, so you might have a few matches show up that might not have otherwise shown up on ancestry 

If you need any guidance, feel free to reach out.

 Find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/189583818973499

Michael Crow 

mikec1120@comcast.net 

Unexpected Y-DNA Finding's in a One Name Study

 When starting out in my Y-DNA quest to genetically map all the Kilcoyne's of Western Ireland, I expected to find the usual variants of the name Kilcoyne in the DNA lists of the testers. Coyne. Coen , etc. Of the 60 testers there are in the Kilcoyne/Coyne Project, I have found no such connection between the Kilcoyne and Coyne surnames. I am sure as time goes on, that this will change. This is where it stands now though. 

One connection I see consistently across 4 unrelated Kilcoyne families, is the matching to the Coyle's. My initial thought was that it was a coincidence, that there must have been a non paternal event somewhere in these families. The two surnames are completely different clans. The Coyle's primarily being from Donegal and Tyrone. With Scottish and English lines as  well. The Kilcoyne's exclusively being from Mayo and Sligo. So I set out to discover more. I encouraged the testers to upgrade their STR kits to the BigY700. I was lucky in having wonderful participation and several made that happen. The BigY is a far superior test than the standard STR tests. STR's (short tandem repeats) are not very reliable in determining  genetic distance between testers. With the BigY, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism) are found in the y chromosome which enable the haplotree to build down genetic branches, which are much more helpful in seeing where families branched off more recent in time. 

While waiting on test results and finding and encouraging others to test, I decided to take on the Coyle Y DNA project on FTDNA. The administrator for that Project was no longer interested in managing it, and was eager to hand it off to me. My thought was to combine the two Projects, but there are many Coyle's and variants of the name that have no connection to the Kilcoyne's. So, the best I could do was to encourage members of both groups to join both the Kilcoyne and Coyle Projects. Most of the testers in the Coyle Project are no longer active so I found it was easier to have my Kilcoyne's join the Coyle Project. I labeled each lineage in both the Projects according to color. So the Gold in the Kilcoyne group are the same as the Gold in the Coyle Project. See  the results pages of both projects. 

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Kilcoyne?iframe=ycolorized

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/coildna/dna-results

This is the name distribution of the kilcoyne and Coyle surnames on the 1901 census. https://barrygriffin.com/surname-maps/

As BigY results began to post, the result was clear for two groups, the Blue and Gold. In the early 18th century, the Blue Kilcoyne's were based around Louisburgh, Mayo and the Gold are from South Sligo. Both groups had Coyle matching that can be estimated back 400-600 years. The other two groups. Light Blue and Brown, do not have BigY testers, but they show close STR matching with Coyle's, the matching for these remain unsubstantiated at this point though due to STR's not being very reliable for dating. The matching is still very telling.

The Gold Kilcoyne's  match is to Donegal. While the Blue Kilcoyne's is to Athlone, Roscommon. My opinion is that the matching to these four groups are not a coincidence, that they are the result of the cultural pressure Ireland was under in the last several hundred years. As the Irish were forced to anglicize their names, surnames became mistranslated as they were documented. This was a common occurrence for many Irish families. So I had to take a closer look at the two surnames and see what could have happened, and sought help from an Irish speaker. As explained, the Coyle name in the Irish language is "Mac Giolla Chomhghaill, which translates as "son of the servant of St Chomhghall. Kilcoyne translates to Mac Giolla Chaoin. As in son of the servant of Coyne. There is substantial similarity between Chaoin and Chromhghall, particularly if you drop the ghall part off the name, for convenience or translation purposes. If you hand write Chaoin and Chomh, they are remarkably similar, particularly since "in" looks identical to "m" and the literacy levels of those are in question when these names when being written"

 To me, the evidence was clear. There are many Kilcoyne's that  carry the Y chromosome found in many that have the name Coyle. And vice versa. From the Y-DNA evidence and what is known about the two clans, there are many Coyle's that have no connection at all to the Kilcoyne's, but there are surely many that do. It will be interesting to see how all this unfolds as more testers are recruited in both Projects. 

The results from the Blue Kilcoyne group, as mentioned, show a match to Coyle man from about 400-600 years ago. But interestingly, this same group shows a match to a Kilcoyne man that is estimated back 600-800 years ago. So it seems the Kilcoyne surname in this instance has been used for that long, and the introduction  of Coyle in this genetic pool could have been the result of the Kilcoyne name being mistranslated, and it being a variant of Kilcoyne. The timing of the match coincides with the island losing its native language as it's primary language.  I eagerly await test results and finding and encouraging others to test, so we can discover more

These are the  Kilcoyne families in Ireland discovered using Y-DNA . 8 groups. The largest being the Gold, Light Blue and Blue. Its is possible the smaller groups are from non paternal events, like adoption, or a child taking the surname of his mother. 

Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome. 

If you are a Coyle, Coyne or Kilcoyne, and would like to participate, feel free to reach out to me. 

I am the volunteer Project administrator of the Kilcoyne and Crow Projects on FTDNA. 

Michael Crow

mikec1120@comcast.net