A Spanner In The Works

In the last posting on this blog I said that I was waiting for the results of a DNA test on a descendant of Robert Doris of Westport.

To recap, the problem is this: there are two Doris families in the West of Ireland. One of them is a well-known family in the Westport area who seem to have come to that part of the world from Tyrone as part of the expulsion of Catholics from that area at the end of the 18th. century. The other is the Doris family of Lettermacaward in the west of Donegal. These Dorises, according to tradition, are also descended from weavers from Tyrone and they are said to be linked to the Mayo family. I have had a DNA test done myself and a test was also taken by a member of the Dorans family who, according to the paper trail, is a descendant of my great-grandfather's half-brother John. Not surprisingly, my profile and his are the same, so I think we can probably assume that all members of the Donegal family share the same profile.

In theory, the Mayo family should also share this profile. Unfortunately, there is a spanner in the works. The test by the member of the Mayo family doesn't match our profile! It seems to broadly match the profile of the Doris family found in Tyrone, though more work needs to be done to compare the results of the different Doris families there. But ours is quite different. Genetically, we don't seem to be Dorises! (You can check these results free of charge by looking at the Ysearch database).

On the face of it, this seems disastrous. It seems to imply that we have no connection with the Mayo family and that therefore the idea of our family coming to Mayo as refugees is invalid. Is this true? I don't think so. For one thing, the name Doris is a very unusual one in the west and its presence in Donegal requires explanation. Could it be that the Donegal family adopted the form Doris because of the fame of the Mayo family, who were prominent in Nationalist politics? This is impossible, for one very simple reason. The name Doris is used in records in Donegal in 1864 and in 1870, decades before the Mayo family came to prominence. The account from the farmer called Boyle also specifically links them to Mayo, the weaving trade and Tyrone.

So how can we reconcile the two facts - the DNA difference between the Donegal and Mayo families and the supposed links between the two families suggested by tradition and implied by the surname? It seems to me that our ancestor probably did come to Mayo with the Doris family of Westport but for whatever reason, he was not genetically a Doris himself. In other words, he did not have the same father (or possibly even grandfather) as the rest of the family, for whatever reason.

People automatically think of illegitimacy or marital infidelity in these cases and although this is possible, it is only one of many possible reasons. It was quite common in those days for people to remarry when their spouse died, and the children of the earlier marriage often took their stepfather's name. The same could happen when people adopted a child, usually from relatives. In other words, we may well have Doris blood but we are not genetically Dorises on the father to son line.

So where did our profile come from? Our profile seems to be quite rare and there aren't many people with the pattern 12 and 14 at DYS 385 a and b. Perhaps, as more people put their details into the databases, we will find a match with someone whose ancestors came from Tyrone.

So, the results are disappointing in a way for the Donegal Doris family but I am confident that the mystery will be solved one day, if that's any consolation!

DNA and the Doris family

In the book, the Doris Family of Lettermacaward, I discussed the use of DNA in genealogy. This is certainly an area of research which has great potential for Irish families like ours - the paper trail tends to be poor in Ireland and it is unusual to get back further than 200 years. In the book, I gave an account of what I have found out so far. There is clear evidence that our family are a branch of the Donegal family, as an American descendant of the Donegal family, who shares a great-great-grandfather with me according to the paper trail, has been tested and has the same DNA profile as I have. Since the book was published, I have also been contacted by a member of the Mayo family, a descendant of Robert Doris of Westport. He has taken a test and we are now waiting to see whether the profile confirms the connection between the Donegal branch of the family and the Mayo branch, or whether it disproves it. Watch this space!

More about the Doris book

It has been a long time since I have added to this Blog but I felt I should keep it going so here are a few comments. Since the book on the Doris Family of Lettermacaward was published, I have heard from a number of people in the States who are members of the family. Most of them seem to have found the book while surfing, so I have high hopes that eventually we will trace scattered members of the family who we know little or nothing about and add their details to a future edition. So far I have done very little to spread the word about the book but in the New Year I hope to send out some cards or letters about the book to every Doris or Dorans I can find in telephone directories etc. I have bought a copy of the book to put into the reference section of the Dungloe Library - the Glenties Library has been closed, unfortunately - and will send this off along with my Christmas cards. Then there are various other reference libraries and collections, such as the National Archives in Dublin, the Library of Congress and the Latter Day Saints, not to mention other more local collections like the Greenock Library and the Linenhall in Belfast. This will take a year or two, I'd say, by which time there will probably be an expanded edition and I'll probably have to start again! Anyway, to anyone who has bought the book, to anyone in the family and to anyone who has found this blog by accident, have a wonderful Christmas and a successful and healthy New Year! Nollaig Shona agus Bliain Úr Faoi Mhaise Daoibh!

The book is available

Finally, after a lot of messing around and false starts, the book is now available through Lulu.com. I have seen the first draft copy and I have no complaints about the quality of the printing and binding (I just wish the interface had been a little easier to manage!) If anyone wants to contact me about the contents or any aspect of the book, they can do so at dorisfamily@hotmail.co.uk. I have a long list of people to contact, so I'll get on with that!

The Book Is Coming!

I have finally managed to get the book on the Lettermacaward Doris family to the stage of publication. The process itself was tricky and I pity anyone with no computer experience trying to work their way through it. I needed a lot of help from a friend who has produced lots of reports and is very familiar with Microsoft Word and without his help I would have been completely lost. I did make one fundamental mistake with the book - I intended to market it on Amazon, but it seems that the format I chose (which was nearly A4 size) can't be registered with Amazon. This is a pity but it isn't a big deal - people can still order copies through Lulu itself. When I get my first copy back and have checked it for quality, I will then go back onto the Lulu website and put it on "general release" and then I will have to write to as many members of the Doris, Dorans and Doorish family as I can find online and in telephone directories to tell them that it is available and how to go about getting a copy. I am offering it as a download for £5 as well as in book form. As a PDF file, the book looks very good and I very much hope that the Lulu printing and binding do it justice. I will put more information on this blog over the next few weeks when the book arrives.

Irish First Names

I have already discussed some points about Irish surnames in this blog but I feel I should also say a few words about first names. Ancient Irish first names were complex. While some of them were very common - names like Tuathal, Fiach, Ceallach, Aedh - and are found in many different lines in many parts of the country, others are very uncommon. In many cases, the names invoke the protection of a force of nature, like the sea, the storm (the element anfadh is found in Irish names). Some of them seem to be descriptive, giving a colour with another element which is a placename. Thus Dubh Eamhna and Donn Clochair probably mean the Black Haired One of Eamhain and the Brown Haired One of Clogher respectively. Some of them invoke the protection of a saint, like Giolla Phádraig or Maol Chiaráin. The important thing to remember about these ancient names is that they were so varied because surnames didn't exist at that time. However these names were composed, they needed to be more distinctive because of the lack of surnames. In some cases bearers of the more common names would be given a nickname. After surnames came in in the tenth and eleventh centuries, names began to become less varied. Eventually, they were almost limited to the saints' names that are so common today, like Peadar, Tomás, Pádraig. However, it should be borne in mind that in English, Irish names were frequently mangled out of all recognition. Conall became Cornelius, Donncha became Dionysius, Nóra became Honoria, Síle became Cecilia. Don't get the idea that your ancestor was posh just because he is called Aeneas Docherty. The Aeneas is probably Aonghus, or Angus as it is better known to English speakers. This can be seen very clearly in the recent talk about Barrack Obama's ancestor, who apparently was called Falmouth Kearney. Falmouth is not an Irish name and it is almost certainly a corrupt rendering of an Irish name like Feilimidh or Phelimy as it is sometimes given in English. Another very important point about first names is the Gaelic custom of naming the first boy after the paternal grandfather, the second boy after the maternal grandfather, the first girl after the paternal grandmother and the second girl after the maternal grandmother. There was no rule after this, but it was common for subsequent children to be named after their own parents. It was thought to be very unlucky to name a child after yourself without going through the grandparents' names first - either you or the child would die! The importance of this for the genealogist is obvious. You can often reconstruct the names of previous generations by looking at the names of the children in a family. In general, this rule only applied in families where the link to the Irish language was strong and as they became more urbanised and removed from their roots they tended to lose this custom. However, it is always worth looking out for this pattern, as it is a Godsend to the genealogist

Odds and Ends

There are a number of different Doris individuals mentioned in records on the internet which I have not included in the family history study because they are out of any meaningful context. There is nothing to tell us where they came from or who they were. For example, there are occasional references to Doris individuals in other parts of Ireland, like Cork or Carlow, but they don't seem to form any kind of recognisable pattern. The Cornelius Doris who was a tailor in New York in the 1840s and was mentioned in the book The Irish of New York is also a mystery. The convict Duross family in Australia are also a mystery. They seem to have arrived in the Antipodes in the 1820s and one member of the family, Constable William Duross, had a walk-on part in the tale of Ned Kelly. These Durosses seem to have been of Protestant stock, which is unusual. However, in spite of occasional occurrences of the name and its variants in other areas, the vast majority of instances of the Doris name are found in places like Fermanagh and Tyrone in the north, with colonies in Mayo, Donegal and Scotland by the 19th. century.