McDowell Name Study

Date: 9 Nov 2023 [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: McDowell McDowall MacDowell

About the Project

The McDowell Name Study project serves as a collaborative platform to collect information on the McDowell name. The hope is that other researchers like you will join the study to help make it a valuable reference point for other genealogists who are researching or have an interest in the McDowell name.

As a One Name Study, this project is not limited to persons who are related biologically. Individual studies can be used to branch out the research into specific methods and areas of interest, such as geographically (e.g., Scotland McDowells, Ireland McDowells), by time period (e.g., 18th Century McDowells), or by topic (e.g., African-American McDowells, McDowell DNA, McDowell Occupations, McDowell Statistics). These studies may also include a number of family branches which have no immediate link with each other. Some researchers may even be motivated to go beyond the profile identification and research stage to compile fully sourced, single-family histories of some of the families they discover through this name study project.

Also see the related surnames and surname variants.

How to Join

If you'd just like to add your McDowells to the study or are new to WikiTree and want to see what's being done, you can join the project and "lurk" to learn your way around. If you feel like adding your own research later, you can always do that.

If you're ready to add content to the study, start out by browsing our current research pages to see if a specific study already fits your interests. If so, feel free to add your name to the Membership list below, post an introduction comment on the specific team page, and then dive right in!

If a research page does not yet exist for your particular area of interest, please contact the Name Study Coordinator: Jacqueline McDowell for assistance. We can get you set up with a new free space research page for sharing your interests.

Once you are ready to go, (at any level) you can show your project affiliation with the ONS Member Sticker:

Research Pages

Here are some of the current research pages included in the study. I'll be working on them and could use your help! If you have a research topic in mind, we can easily set up a page for it.

• McDowell Name Study — The McDowell Surname and Its Variants
• McDowell Family Mysteries
• McDowell Name Study — The Line of John McDowell and Elizabeth Unknown of Amelia County, Virginia, 1700s
• Early McDowell Immigrants in British America
• McDowell Name Study — McDowells of the James River Counties in Early Colonial Virginia
• McDowell Name Study — McDowells of the York River Counties in Colonial Virginia

DNA

Current Y-DNA testing shows a number of unrelated families have adopted the McDowell surname over the centuries. The McDowell surname project at FamilyTree DNA has 197 members who have tested at levels from Y-12 to Big-Y. If you are interested and can afford it, the Big-Y test will provide the most refined haplogroup information and tightest time frames for matches. As more males test, the relationships to matches will become even clearer. Honestly, it would be nice if the Big-Y test was less expensive. And yet, when you consider the lifetime (and beyond!) benefits as more people test, it's far less expensive than we first think. If you'd like more information, see the FamilyTree DNA web page at: https://www.familytreedna.com/.

As of 3 September 2024, one member has a McDowell relative who has done the Big-Y test. His haplogroup is currently R-BY69950 with one match with the surname Allen. The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of this line is estimated to have been born around 1450 CE/AD. Recently, a child haplogroup of R-BY69950 was split: R-FT287162 with two members with surnames Readey and Kennedy. The MRCA of this haplogroup was born around 1500 CE/AD. As more men take the Big-Y test, this McDowell and Allen will undoubtedly form two new haplogroups and further refine the timelines for their direct male ancestors.

At the Y-67 level, our known McDowell tester has 15 matches, 10 of whom are also McDowells. Traditional "paper trail" genealogy shows their earliest identified ancestors to be in Colonial Virginia and North Carolina by the 1730s. So far, we are unable to connect them to a common ancestor.

If you have Big-Y tested McDowells, please consider adding their haplogroup information here. Once we have more testers, we can set up a separate DNA section.

Membership

Please add your name here and your research interests if you would like to join.

• Jacqueline McDowell set up this one-name study to help fellow McDowells (in all its current spellings) connect and share information about our ancestral families. Undoubtedly, many of us are not related genetically. The name was likely adopted by various families in the past. I hope, though, that shared research will help us untangle our ancestral lines! Currently, my McDowell line most likely begins with this John McDowell. I'm hoping to find out where he came from and who his ancestors were.
• Cort McDowell has family that migrated from Larne, Northern Ireland in the 1950s and would like to find out more about her roots.
• Pamela Hodgins has McDowell ancestors from Counties Louth and Offaly. She and her brother have DNA tested.

Related Surnames and Surname Variants

• McDowall
• MacDowell
• MacDowall
• McDuel
• MacDuel

People Profiles

• McDowell Name Study category

Click on the above link to see the various profiles already in the McDowell Name Study and to "grab" the code for adding your McDowell profiles to the study. (Just add the code below the "Biography" heading, and it will generate the study "sticker.") We can easily add additional location and subject categories to those currently in the study.

Resources

• McDowells in America: A Genealogy by Dorothy Kelly MacDowell. https://archive.org/details/mcdowellsinameri00macd
• A McDowell Genealogy by Frank McDowell. https://archive.org/details/mcdowellgenealog00mcdo/mode/2up?view=theater
• The MacDowells by Fergus D. H. Macdowall and William L. MacDougall. Clan MacDougall Society of North America, Inc. Parkton, Maryland. This book is not available online but can still be purchased. It's an interesting glimpse into the history of the name in Scotland, with some information about later migrations to other parts of the world. Unless you can trace your ancestry to a few documented lines, you won't find a direct connection back to Scotland.

• List of McDowells on Wikitree
• G2G feed of questions tagged "McDowell"

Maybe someone would like to show some love to these McDowells? There are more than 1,700 orphaned McDowell profiles!

• Orphaned McDowell profiles on WikiTree
• Unsourced McDowell profiles on WikiTree
• Unconnected McDowell profiles on WikiTree