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
