McDaniel/McDonald/McDonnell History Genealogy and Y-DNA

Question

I shared the following with a new McDaniel WikiTreer, and it occurs to me that I should also share it here.

My grandmother was a McDaniel from Licking County, Ohio. Her paternal ancestors first appear in Pittsylvania (formerly Halifax) County, VA and went from there to Greenbrier County, WV and then to Gallia and Lawrence Counties, OH. I have a 1796 deed in which the surname of my 4th-great-grandfather was written McDaniel three times and McDonald three times. The name McDaniel in fact is a corruption of McDonald that appears in the American South. As to ethnicity ...

We grew up assuming that our McDonalds were descendants of Scotland's Clan Donald, but Y-DNA tests of McDaniel cousins prove instead that our particular McDaniel/McDonald ancestors were Irish and probable descendants of a 15th-century Irish warlord known as Niall of the Nine Hostages. In fact, my McDaniel cousins have a close Y-DNA match with a McDonald whose ancestor was Patrick McDonnell born ca. 1818 in Ballynacarrow, County Sligo, Ireland. Discovering that, I did some research and found that heads of families in County Sligo in 1749 include 4 McDaniels and 6 persons whose surname was either McDonall, McDonel, McDonnel, or McDonell.

If interested, you can read here about Niall genetics ... https://www.familytreedna.com/landing/matching-niall.aspx

Comments

It was George F. Black, Ph.D., in his 1993 "Surnames of Scotland", who first said that the change from McDonald to McDaniel occurred mainly in the American South. Clearly, the 1749 census of County Sligo, Ireland shows that the change had already happened there.

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Niall's supposed reign was around the 5th century. We don't know if he existed. We don't have his DNA. We do have M222 DNA from actual people who lived many hundreds of years before the 5th century. i.e. a population existed with same haplogroup well before he would have. Therefore, to say one is a "probable" descendant is unscientific and likely wrong for obvious reasons.

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Hi Mike. I should not have used the word "probable". However, FamilyTreeDNA cites a study by Trinity College Dublin as "suggesting that the 5th-century warlord known as 'Niall of the Nine Hostages' may be [emphasis added] the ancestor of one in 12 Irishmen."

FTDNA also says that Trinity scientists found an area in northwest Ireland where they say 21.5% of men " carry Niall’s genetic fingerprint." FTDNA also points to several specific DYS values that are shared by less than 1/4 of the men in that area.  How many men in the broad M222 haplogroup have these same values for those specific DYS?

Whether Niall existed is not the main point here.  The main points are:

1. In many families, McDaniel was corrupted from McDonald.

2. That change occurred relatively early in the area of Ireland where "Niall" is thought to have been.

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The haplogroup provides much more info than the STR markers. Almost all men in M222 will have those particular DYS counts, including myself. If you are interested in Irish surname origins and changes across time, I would encourage joining the FTDNA M222, and if downstream of DF104/105, the Sons of Aodh Project.  Sons of Aodh are creating one of the largest Cladograms of Irish surnames using BigY results.

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Thank you Mike. As far as being actively involved with Y-DNA goes, I have my hands full as administrator of the Lynn/Linn project. My eldest brother was tested and found to be R-U198, which is fairly uncommon. Of course, it being a surname project, it includes Lynns of all haplogroups.

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In the past, many people weren't at all sure what their surname was supposed to be exactly.  They certainly didn't remember the ancient origin of it (and even if they had a theory, it was usually a made-up theory).

So when distinct but similar names arrived in the same locality, they often came to be seen as freely interchangeable.  Who could say whether you were a McDonald or a McDaniel really, if it was believed that they were both the same really anyway.

Actual evolution of names tends to happen in isolation.  Leave a McDonald couple on a desert island and their descendants might end up as Muddle or Minoddle or anything.

But this kind of divergence isn't likely to happen where the original name is still well known.

So if some McDonalds start calling themselves McDaniel, this is likely to be under the influence of existing McDaniels.

Some McDaniels might have descended from McDonalds, but it shouldn't be assumed that they all did.

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The fact is that, even in educated families, the spelling of surnames in the English-speaking world was rather inconsistent even into the 19th century. That fact is dramatically illustrated by several centuries of documents for one family (though not the McDaniel/McDonald family). They clearly all are for the same family because they all relate to one particular property they owned for that time. In these documents, the surname is written no less than four different ways. In fact, there is one document in which the surname was spelled one way for the father and another for the son.

More to the point, the 1796 deed I mentioned in my original message (above) is written with my 4th-great-grandfather's surname spelled McDaniel three times and McDonald three times. I have a photocopy of the original deed obtained from the relevant clerk of court. Beginning a few decades later, the name was recorded consistently as McDaniel. It is absolutely certain that McDaniel, at least in some cases - perhaps all or nearly all cases - did evolve from McDonald.

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In studying the history of Ireland, many Scots migrated to Ireland and settled there with the encouragement of the English. So an Irishman with the name of MacDonald, MacDaniel could also have Scottish DNA.

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Thanks for the note Linda.  However, my McDaniel/McDonald ancestors' Y-DNA haplogroup is shared with O'Neills, O'Donnells, Donnellys, O'Rourkes, and 22 other Irish Gaelic surnames.

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Willis McDonald (1760-1840) is one of my brick walls, and confusion of McDonald/McDaniel is part of it.

Despite DNA Project's best efforts, I'm still pretty clueless about DNA. This is my mom's line, and she never had a DNA test. I had mine through Family Tree DNA: FTDNA kit #360775, GEDmatch T227726. Since I'm female & not a McDonald, would a comparison of my DNA help (Willis is my 4x-gr-grand, which is beyond the 5 generations I think is the max that non-Ydna can be relevant)?

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Liz, I'm sorry you do not turn up as a match for anyone in my family.  Of course that doesn't mean we don't share some ancestry, given the nature of autosomal DNA and the passage of time.

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I'm sorry too, but thanks so much for checking for a match Loretta!

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Liz, what is "DNA Project"? Sorry if this is obvious, but you've already checked for known Y-DNA test takers or test taking candidates for any of Willis McDonald's male descendants?

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WikiTree's DNA Project - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:DNA - has been patiently answering my questions for 5 years or more. Whatever glimmer of understanding I have is thanks to them.

Re: Obvious question... not to me LOL. No, I have not, since it's my mom's line & she never took a DNA test, there's no way to match my dna to Willis who is beyond 5 generations from me. Right? Even if I knew what you meant or how to go about it, how would it prove my relationship to Willis? (See, this is what I mean by the patience of the folks in WikiTree's DNA Project - my questions started out WAY more basic than this!!)

Cheers, Liz

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Ok Liz, By "brickwall" I originally assumed you meant there were no ancestors found. I was looking at your question as two different goals: to prove relationship to Willis and to break through his brickwall. As far as atDNA, it would be rare but not impossible to find low cM matches with MRCA up to 8 generations. I've got a few up to 7 generations. If you're on ancestry.com, for example, I assume you've already checked all of your distant matches for his surname, etc.?  Will be impossible to use your 6 and 7cM matches very soon now, however, unless they are flagged.

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ah! I had not thought to look at dna matches as a way to help find a way through a brick wall for him. Part of the problem is there are two or three contenders in the area and no one seems to agree on their relationships. I didn't think that dna could help much if you're looking to determine which brother/uncle/cousin from the mid-1700s was someone's father. No idea about the rest of what you're saying. Your last statement "Will be impossible to use your 6 and 7cM matches very soon now, however, unless they are flagged." ... what does that mean? Should I be going into gedmatch or ftdna and, um... how does one flag a match (assuming I can find a match).

Even though I'm not sure what you're saying, I appreciate the response!

Cheers, Liz

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Hi Loretta. I’m a Fairfield County Ohio McDaniel. I thought I would test as M222 but did not. Have you made contact with Eric McDaniel?  He is quite active on this site and is an M222 McDaniel, very knowledgeable and willing to help others. My and his lines go back through Pennsylvania.

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Liz, yes DNA can help a lot if you're looking for brother/uncle/cousin from the mid-1700s.  But success rate will depend on number of potential matches and their tree sizes, and number of generations.  I've had a lot of success matching MRCA born in mid 1700's myself. I also have use of 100-yo atDNA from my paternal and maternal lines to help confirm. If you use, ancestry.com, they are removing all "unflagged" (my term for no stars, groups, annotations, or messages) distant matches (6-7cM) this month as part of an effort to reduce their server load. Compared to other services, ancestry.com has several times more potential matches for most people. So that will be a huge setback for brick-wall busting.

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Hi Phil.  The Y-DNA haplogroup of my McDaniels is R-M269.  However, see Mike Wells's comment and mine below that.

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Loretta, R-M222 is under R-M269 : R-M269 > R-L23 > R-L51 > R-L52 > R-L151 > R-P312 > R-S461 > R-L21 > R-DF13 > R-DF49 > R-Z2980 > R-Z2976 > R-DF23 > R-Z2961 > R-S645 > R-Z2965 > R-M222.  In other words, your McDaniels could be R-M222.

R-M269 is 4,500–9,000 yo. R-M222 is like 2,000 yo.

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Thank you Mike.  Clearly I didn't  look far enough, relying only on an out-of-date report from a cousin who manages our representative McDaniel's FTDNA account.

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Phil, I have values for my McDaniel cousin for only 13 markers. I'll list them here and contact the relative who was then managing that account and ask for the rest. His report was limited to 13 because he was comparing our cousin's results to the DYS recognized as being values for the so-called "Niall of the Nine Hostages".  "N/T" stands for Not Tested.

DYS____Niall____McDaniel
19_____14______14
388____12______12
390____25______25
391____11______11
392____14______13
393____13______13
434_____9______N/T
435____11______N/T
436____12______12
437____15______15
438____12______12
439____12______12
389i____13______13
389ii____29______29
460_____11______11
461_____10______N/T
462_____11______N/T

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Would R-L20 fall under this to

Answer 1

The connection to Niall of the Nine Hostages doesn't fully rule out descent from Clan Donald - well, maybe clan membership as opposed to biological descent. The clan were mercenaries at that time, and if Niall needed warriors, the McDonalds were happy to rent out their army, if they happened to be on good terms with them at the time. If your County Sligo ancestors were Catholic, there's a very good chance they settled there as "retired" Gallowglass warriors as things became more civilized. Whether the non-paternal event happened before or after would be something to investigate ... were they McDonalds with an interruption to the paternal line, or locals who took the McDonald name after joining that army? 

Check out the Gallowglass project on FTDNA for more info, and the Clan Donald DNA project, which has this to say about M222: 

The group ... is centered geographically in northwestern Ireland. It is always referred to as the 'Irish' or 'Niall' group. Clan Donalds with this genetic signature may be descendants of Colla Uais; descendants of the O'Neill; or O'Donnell kindreds with whom we regularly served in Irish military operations; the O'Cahans from the Dowry of fighting men provided to Angus Og [McDonald] upon his marriage to the O'Cahan's daughter or descendants of Colla Menn from whom Gillebride sought assistants to recover his lands from the Norse.

This group is in addition almost all M222-S658-DF104-DF105. The age of this group is very roughly 2700 years [i.e., much older than Clan Donald].

(My family is I haplogroup, so I've done a lot of research into the distinctions. We are likely descended from Gillespies also associated with the clan.)

Comments

That's terribly interesting Kelly. I have to say I was a bit disappointed to learn that my McDaniels were Irish, but I soon embraced that heritage as well. Aside from the Y-DNA of a living chief, does anyone know for certain what Clan Donald Y-DNA looks like? We know that a "non-parental event" such as adoption or illegitimacy could have happened in any generation between. I'll get in touch with the cousin who manages my McDaniel cousin's account at FTDNA and see if he knows anything about M222-S658-DF104-DF105. He has always held out the hope that our McDaniels were nevertheless genetically related to Clan Donald.

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BTW, my McDaniels were Protestants, and actively so, as far back as I can determine. The earliest church record I have is a 1788 marriage for Henry Jr. performed by the Baptist pastor John Alderson, Jr. Once the family arrived in Gallia Co., Ohio, Henry, his sons, and grandsons were members of the Baptist and United Brethren churches.

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Oh yes, Clan Donald has an extensive Y-DNA project - here's the starter page: https://clandonaldusa.org/index.php/dna-project. From there, you can go to "Participants' Test Results" and then R1b is where your folks would fall. Based on the comments, my money is on your family adopting the name as co-combatants in one battle or another.

My uncle was also hoping to be descended from Somerled (Somhairle) himself. Now, when people ask if my McDonalds are Irish or Scottish, I just say "yes!" And btw many sources (not all) say that Somerled was born in Ireland, so you're Irish either way. Happy (belated) St. Patrick's Day!

One more thought - it's not a very reliable indicator, but the forms of the name without the "d" tend to be Irish, whether by origin or adopted country. Scottish gaelic has harsher sounds, like the trailing "d," or Loch vs Lough in Irish, so an Irish person saying the same name would sound more like "McDannell." (We have both, but the one McDaniel is from the American South as several people have mentioned.)

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That's interesting about the Baptists - but keep in mind that the Baptist faith is relatively new in the scope of things, only appearing in the early 1600s, so they would have converted at some point. The question is, from which religion did they convert, and when/where? I would suggest that your research in Ireland should include all faiths, since they may have converted when they arrived here in the US.

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Hi Kelly.  I don't know how  missed your comment of three years ago.  Just for the sake of argument, he could have converted from Presbyterian, which arose in Scotland in the mid 1500s.  Being ethnic Irish, however, he probably did convert from Catholicism.

Answer 2

In Canada of the 19th century, surnames were spelled in censuses however the enumerator or registrar/clerk thought they should be spelled.  Because we have a hand-written history of our family from the 1930's/1940 and notes on the rural areas where people lived, we can verify that the same family's name was spelled at least three different ways in "official" records until about 1900.

In the case of our McDonnells, Canadian censuses flipped back and forth between McDonell, McDonnell and McDonald over the 19th century.  By the 20th century, one brother had apparently passed along the name as McDonald and started giving their origin as Scotland, while my great-great-grandfather, John, kept the family name as McDonnell.  One other difference: Richard McD continued to live in a 19th century Ontario, Canada that had a strong anti-Irish bias, and John McD moved to Chicago which was very Irish at the time.

Comments

That's good to know Joanna. Thanks very much for sharing.

Answer 3

Loretta,

If the results you manage are on FTDNA you should join the Sons of Aodh project.  They are working on the YDNA side of those to descend from the high kings of ireland.  One of the main researchers, David, can give you more information after you join.  You may also benefit from submitting your data to the The Big Tree if your tester had the SNP testing completed.

Comments

To add a bit more, I looked and I don't see a relation to my McDaniel line.  My line goes McDaniel- McDonough- O'Flaherty- Ui Briuin.  You may not actually descend from Naill, as David explained to me that that marker is only named after him but actually was created long before Naill was alive.

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Eric, I've heard the same about the "Niall" marker. All the same, to generate so many descendants, it clearly belonged to a man of some power in northwest Ireland.

I'll pass on the Sons of Aodh project because my "Niall" match is not among the men in my Linn/Lynn project but is a close McDaniel cousin of mine. I appreciate the thought though.

Answer 4

I too, have McDaniel ancestors and I just got my Ancestry dna test results but don't know where to go or what to do with them. Or do I have to retest to find my haplogroups? My McDaniel line goes back through Sumner Co, TN c 1800

And before that, Allen McDaniel of Rowan County, NC. Can someone please tell me if the basic ancestry test results are good for surname studies, or whatever your McDaniel DNA page is about? And if you know anything about this Allen McDaniel of Rowan Co, NC...that would be AMAZING!!!!!

Comments

Cindi, for a surname study, you need a male relative who is a McDaniel to have a Y-DNA test, at FamilyTreeDNA for example, not an AncestryDNA test.  Y-DNA is the male chromosome and therefore is helpful for paternal lineage / surname studies.  The Ancestry test, which is chiefly autosomal DNA, cannot identify your McDaniel lineage.  I'm sorry my McDaniels have no connection to the Rowan County McDaniels.

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Loretta, thank you so much for making that clear! Is there a chart/page that I can look at that will show the different Y DNA testers of McDaniel lines, possibly Rowan Co, NC for those early dates? I would like to browse them.....where would I find that?

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There's one at FamilyTreeDNA, but unfortunately no one can see the chart who hasn't had a Y-DNA test or manages the account of someone with a Y-DNA test.  There's another that is publicly available, at least to some extent, but it doesn't include geographical locations or even full names but initials and last name only.  BTW, McDaniel is a corruption of McDonald, so there are Y-DNA matches between the two.  Go here and click the link for Participant's Test Results on the Menu.  You can only search for Participants if you have a member code.

https://clandonaldusa.org/index.php/dna-results

Answer 5

What D&A service did you use if you don’t mind me asking?

Comments

We used FamilyTreeDNA, which is the oldest genetic genealogy lab and has the largest DNA database.  What you need for your direct paternal line is a Y-DNA test.  Only one or two other labs do Y-DNA, and not nearly as comprehensively as FTDNA.  Now is a good time to order at FTDNA as they are having a great sale.  They have several levels of Y-DNA tests.  The least expensive is Y-37 (37 Y-STR markers) for $79 as opposed to the usual $119.  However, with a name like McDaniel, you will need a higher level test because you almost certainly will have a great number of matches, in which case you would need more markers tested to identify those that are closest to you.  The Y-111 test (111 Y-STR markers) is currently $199 instead of $249.  Then there's the Big Y-700 which includes all of that plus 1,000s of Y-SNP markers, which are even better, in several ways, than STR markers.  All that being said, you should be aware that just once in awhile, Y-DNA turns up the unexpected.  Most significantly, some men discover that their birth name is not their genetic name, meaning that in some generation or other the name was changed due to adoption or other "non-parental" event.  Here is FTDNA's sale page.  You should probably scroll down to the section captioned "Have questions? We have answers." and do some reading before ordering a test.

https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna#compare