Huron Branch – Highlanders, Islanders, Outlanders and Y-DNA’: A One-Name Scottish Genealogical Research Adventure Back in Time – John Maguire

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Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/06/2023
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

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Please join us on Wednesday, June 7th at 7:30 p.m. EDT

Pre- register for this Zoom webinar at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqduiqqz8sGd2IDetxfw2ZMYF9e_z2Ehbw

This Y-DNA case study presentation will focus on the family of one local Ontario family with the surname Campbell which emigrated from the Island of Tiree, Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides, to Greenock Township, Bruce County, Ontario in 1851.  The presenter, John Campbell Maguire, is one of many descendants of the head of that pioneer family, a man named Duncan Alexander Campbell (1828-1911). That man’s father and grandfather had been identified but the paper trail ended abruptly with the latter’s 1770 Tiree baptism.

After exhausting conventional genealogical record sources, this Y-DNA research initiative commenced in 2019 with a male Campbell cousin’s Y-DNA test sample and the seemingly impossible goal of trying to verify further generations at the top end of the paternal surname line.  In addition to this primary genealogical goal, the researchers also hoped to either prove or disprove a longstanding, and seemingly fanciful, family history origin myth.

 John is one of three researchers who have been working collaboratively to advance this particular surname study’s goals over the past three years.  Employing cutting edge scientific tools to compare our volunteer tester’s Y-DNA results with hundreds of others in the Clan Campbell Society’s DNA Project database, it has already led to some remarkable preliminary discoveries concerning previously unknown forbears, the family’s connection to Clan Campbell and their early wanderings elsewhere in Scotland.  The research, which is still ongoing, is now pointing to additional family groupings as likely ancestor candidates even ‘further back’ in time, as well as to certain documentary sources that might be used to verify these distant, theorized, familial connections.  None of this would have been possible but for the Y-DNA results and analysis. 

 The preliminary results of this Y-DNA case study were published in the Fall 2022 Edition of the Journal of the Clan Campbell Society (North America).

This presentation may be of interest to anyone with a Scottish Clan surname or who may simply be curious about exploring their deep roots on a specific paternal surname line.  Using this Campbell family case study as a example of what might be learned through Y-DNA testing, John will explain how advanced Y-DNA testing could assist the amateur genealogist when