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
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