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!