The Argentina Connection - how the Spierin's got caught up in the Dresden Affair

I originally wrote this article in December 2010 but I am only getting around to posting it now.

Maurice Gleeson

June 2023

The Voyage Out

On the 16th August 1910, James Patrick Spierin set sail for Buenos Aires. But three months later, on his return journey, he would die of tuberculosis and was buried at sea. An intriguing mystery surrounds this trip, which, to this day, has not been resolved, and probably never will.

James was the eldest son of Edward Joseph Spierin (1835-1902) and Mary Agnes Ryan (1837-1922). He was born in Dublin in 1868 but spent his early years in Limerick as his father moved jobs. He followed in his father’s footsteps, and joined the railroad when he was 16, working as a clerk in an office. However, by 1902 he had branched out on his own, and was working for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company – steamships.

In 1905, he married Charlotte Dorah O’Driscoll, daughter of John O’Driscoll, a successful Dublin tailor. They set up home in 107 Seville Place, and the following year they had a baby girl – Dorothea Margaret (Doreen).

1905 marriage record of James Patrick Spierin &
1906 birth record of his daughter

But in August 1910, James sailed from Liverpool for Buenos Aires via Monte Video on the Highland Watch (see the Additional Information section at the end of this article for further information). Now, this steamship belonged to the Nelson line, and ran a combined passenger/cargo service from Liverpool to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.

In the twentieth century, the Nelson Line was an important carrier of Irish passengers to Argentina. Founded by James Nelson in Buenos Aires, this company pioneered the carriage of refrigerated cargos, including meat, operating from South America (Nelson owned Las Palmas meat-processing plant). With the emigrant flow to South America growing at a high rate, in 1910 Nelson added new calls in London, Boulogne, Corunna, and Vigo, and its ships were adapted to the emigrant trade. It became one of the associated companies of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., with its own subsidiaries. Some of the Nelson emigrant ships were Highland Corrie, Highland Glen, Highland Harris, and Highland Laddie. (from http://www.irishargentine.org/passenger.htm)

The manifest for the voyage in August 1910 lists three married couples, including a Mr Jas Spierin, a commercial traveller, who was marked down as travelling (second class) with his wife … who appears to be listed as Mrs Ada Elizabeth Swain! They were travelling with four children - 3 girls and a boy: Ada Lucretia Swain, Doris Eleanor Swain, Elsie Morrell Swain, and James Albert Swain.

But who was this woman? Why was she travelling with James? And why were they listed as husband and wife? Was James a bigamist? Or was it simply a mistake in the Register?

The Passenger List from the Highland Watch, 13th August 1910

The Return Journey

They would have landed in Buenos Aires about 21 days later (early September). He stayed in Argentina for 3 months before his return in early December 1910. But he never made it home. On 19th Dec 1910, he died at sea.

James' death notice - there was no telegraph
so his family would only have learnt of his death
after the boat docked

Back in Feb 2008, Dad and I went in search of his death records at the National Archive in Kew in the hope that it would answer some of the questions surrounding his death. It did. But it raised even more questions.

Dad perusing the Register of Deaths at Sea

James left Buenos Aires on the Araby, which presumably set sail for Liverpool via Montevideo in about 10th December 1910. It was a cargo ship with room for only 6 passengers, all second class (see Additional Information below).

James' last address in Buenos Aires was “No. 6, Parish Ward, British Hospital, Buenos Aires” … so he was sick before he left. The cause of death listed in the record was “consumption” (tuberculosis). And it gave the exact latitude and longitude of where he died, or rather, where he was buried at sea: 1.5 degrees North, 28.53 degrees West, halfway between the coast of South America and West Africa – almost as far from land as he could have been.

The burial location of James Patrick Spierin

The voyage would have taken about 21 days in total, and 9 days to reach the place where James died, in the mid-Atlantic, with no prospect of hospitalisation. Why did they bury him at sea? Did the ship lack adequate refrigeration? Or was he considered highly infectious and the body had to be disposed of? What was the process in those days?

And he was travelling under a false name! He was listed in the manifest of passengers as both James Spierin and John Dayly – why?! Was he trying to hide something?

Entry for James' death in the Register of Deaths at Sea

The Mystery Woman

According to the 1901 census of England, Ada Elizabeth Swain (nee Stark) was born about 1875, in Hull. She married Albert Morrell Swain about 1897. He was a year younger than her and was also born in Yorkshire (Goole Bridge). They had at least 4 children - only 2 are listed in the 1901 census: Ada Luacha Swain and Doris Eleanor Swain. But by the time she left for Argentina , she had had two more. In the 1881 census, Albert is 5 years old, and one of 9 children. His parents were James Swain (b1843) and Sarah Elizabeth Morrell (b1845). Albert’s father was an “engine man”. Is this the connection? Did both families work on the railways?

Several people have family trees on www.ancestry.com that tie into this family (esp. the Swain Family Tree, and Nunn Family Tree), and together with the censuses (a very rich source of information) it is possible to trace both sides of their families back another two generations to the early 1810’s (see charts below).

Albert and Ada travelled back and forth to Argentina several times, sometimes alone, sometimes together, sometimes with one or several of their children. Entries from the various manifest lists are extracted below. They appear to have lived between Hull and Buenos Aires. Albert was an engine driver so probably worked on the railways in Argentina.

10th Aug 1916 – on the Deseado from Rio de Janeiro to Plymouth, UK (gives his address and occupation)

24th Jun 1920 – on the Deseado from Buenos Aires to Liverpool (Ada travelled with her 5 children but no husband)

11th Jun 1927 – the Desna from Buenos Aires to Liverpool (Albert travelled with his wife and Ethel Swain, 20. They lived in the Argentine, Ethel in the UK)

25th Aug 1927 – Albert travelled on the Alcantara from Southampton to Buenos Aires (engine driver)

11th April 1930 – Ada travelled alone on the Darro from Buenos Aires to Liverpool as a first class passenger

28th Jan 1937 – Albert & ADA, on the Highland Chieftain from La Plata, Argentina to London (destination Hull)

These various passenger lists allow us to build up a picture of Albert and Ada’s children and their frequent transatlantic crossings.

So what really happened?

Where was Albert in August 1910? Why was Ada travelling with James Spierin to Buenos Aires, with all her children in tow? What was going on? Was James just standing in for her husband? Was he escorting her safely to join her husband in Buenos Aires? Or was he a bigamist?

James’ father Edward was Goods Manager for the Great Southern and Western Railway at the North Wall in Dublin. His work may have entailed dealing with goods transported by rail to Liverpool and thence via steamship to Dublin Port. James may have taken the job with the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company to help his father in this regard. So maybe the families met as a result of their work.

Were there any other reason for James to visit Argentina? Well actually there were! Some of his first cousins had travelled out there on the infamous “City of Dresden” in 1889. The scandal surrounding this particular voyage later became known as The Dresden Affair and effectively put paid to further emigration from Ireland to Argentina (see Additional Information below).

The ship arrived in Buenos Aires on 16th Feb 1889 with 2000 Irish passengers on board. Some had died on the 19 day journey, probably from lack of food and dehydration. The agents for the Argentine government in Ireland (J. O’Meara & John S. Dillon) had promised that the immigrants “would have houses to live in, seed to sow, machinery to work with, and the most fertile land in the world to farm”. Sadly, these were all lies. The immigrants were left destitute. The food and accommodation they were promised did not exist.

Despite appeals to the local community for assistance, many of the immigrants had to resort to desperate measures. Young girls entered prostitution. Others were conned again into working for the promise of free housing and land, which never materialised. One group of families were taken 200 miles by train into the countryside and abandoned. Another group of over 600 colonists were taken to Naposta (400 miles from Bueons Aires) where they eked out a miserable existence living in tents or ditches or under trees. One hundred of them died over 2 years before the decision was taken by the remaining 520 colonists to travel the 400 miles back to Buenos Aires on foot. Many died on the return journey. When news of the scandal reached Ireland, emigration to Argentina was effectively quashed.

James' first cousins who had travelled out on the City of Dresden were children of his uncle Patrick – Michael Speirin (21), his brother John Speirin (26), and John’s wife Charlotte Galvin (22), and their 6-month old daughter, Jane.

Michael returned to Ireland the following year, but it looks like John and Charlotte stayed behind. However, they must have fallen on hard times for by 1895, Jane (Jennie) and her younger sister Carrie were in an orphanage. Years later, in 1928, they returned from Buenos Aires to stay with their uncle Michael in Birkenhead, the same uncle who had travelled with their parents to Argentina in 1889.

So in August 1910, perhaps James Spierin was going out to Argentina to visit his cousins. Or he may have been evaluating some business opportunities there (after all, he was listed on the ship’s manifest as a Commercial Traveller).

And as for returning under a false name … maybe a friend saw how sick he was and gave him his own ticket to try to get him home as quickly as possible. Maybe that friend’s name was John Dayly. Maybe he told him “don’t tell them who you really are until you’re sure they can’t turn back or put you ashore” …

At any rate, poor old James Spierin passed away half-way across the Atlantic. He must have been very sick. Perhaps the other passengers shunned him for fear of infection. Perhaps he spent his days on the deck, exposed to the potentially curative powers of the fresh air. Perhaps, as he looked across the sea, he came to realize that despite his best intentions, he would never see his wife and child again …

But who knows what the real story was …

Abbreviated family tree - James P Spierin is far left, 3rd row down.
His 1st cousins John & & Michael are also in the 3rd row.
My grandfather (Jack Gleeson) is in the 4th row.

Additional Information

The Highland Watch

Here is some info about the Highland Watch (from http://www.merchantnavyofficers.com/nelson.html):

Completed for Nelson Line (Liverpool) Ltd in 1901 and sunk by torpedo when south east of St. Catherine's point on the 7th of April 1918. There followed the Highland Enterprise and the Highland Hope from the yard of Russell and Company, Port Glasgow, in 1903.

Then came three larger vessels of just over 6,000 gross tons from Russell's yard, all completed in 1904. Named Highland Harris, Highland Heather and Highland Watch, they had considerably more passenger accommodation, divided into first- and second-class, and were remarkably successful in establishing the reputation of the company for a reasonable passenger service to the River Plate. The ships had a deadweight capacity of 7,250 tons, and triple-expansion engines giving a speed of 12 knots. Accommodation for the passengers was comfortable but not elaborate, and they soon had a regular clientele among South American travellers who did not care for the grandeur of the Southampton mail ships.

 

The Araby

The Araby was a ship of the MacIver Line. The MacIver family were pioneers in steamships and operated coastal steamship services from Glasgow as early as 1831. David and Charles MacIver were closely associated with Samuel Cunard in the formation of the Cunard Line.

David MacIver, a nephew of the original founder was admitted into the Cunard partnership in 1863, but left the company in 1874 to found his own steamship line. His earliest ships were registered under the name of Birkenhead Shipping Co., Ltd and these were followed by a number of one ship companies, all managed by David MacIver & Co. In 1894 a new company was registered in the name of David MacIver, Sons & Co. and all subsequent ships were registered in this ownership.

In its early days, the MacIver Line had no regular routes, but in 1885 a regular trade was established between Liverpool, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Rosario.

Accidents were few, but in 1890 the Thessaly caught fire at sea while carrying a cargo of cotton between New Orleans and Hamburg and was lost. Losses were heavy during the Great War with the Araby being wrecked near Boulogne in 1916, Barbary was torpedoed and sunk near Port Said in 1917, Gascony torpedoed and sunk off Portsmouth in 1917 and the Brittany was sunk after collision with HMS Eglantine the same year. The last loss was the Tartary which was torpedoed off Ireland in 1918.

The whole of the shares of David MacIver, Sons & Co. were purchased by Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. in 1919 and the name of the company changed to David MacIver & Co., Ltd. Although owned by Royal Mail, the ships continued to sail under their old colours and Liverpool management.

In 1932 the whole of the MacIver ships were transferred to the Royal Mail Line and their grey hulls and red black-topped funnels were changed to the black hull and buff funnel of Royal Mail. At this time, the MacIver Line lost its identity and went into liquidation.


The City of Dresden

Argentina: Land of Broken Promises

By Michael John Geraghty
Buenos Aires Herald, 17 March 1999

From http://www.irlandeses.org/dresden.htm

The Irish and their descendants have always come together on St. Patrick’s Day, today, to celebrate in prayer, parade and party, the arrival in Ireland in 432 of St. Patrick and Christianity. Some of these festivities, such as the Fifth Avenue parade in New York, have become world famous.

The 2,000 Irish immigrants who arrived in Buenos Aires on the M.V. City of Dresden on 16 February 1889, had less than little to celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day that year. The "Dresden affair", as it was then called, became infamous and was denounced in Parliament, press and pulpit. Argentina, their "land of promise," became the land of broken promises.

Here’s what happened.

The Argentine government of 1889, under President Miguel Juárez Celman, actively encouraged immigration. It issued 50,000 free passages and its agents promoted Argentina all over Europe where people were sick and tired of toiling in poverty and pillage and were more than ready to take their chances on foreign shores. Droves of immigrants were sailing west every day to the New World – most to North America and a few to South America. The Irish immigration to Argentina began around 1825, peaked in 1848, and by the end of the century had petered down to a trickle as a result of the "Dresden Affair".

Some of the early immigrants had done very well - rags to riches - thanks to the sheep and wool business that boomed as 19th -century Argentine sheep breeders disputed leadership of the international wool trade with Australia. These immigrants were originally from the farmlands of Wexford and the Irish midlands - Westmeath, Longford and north Offaly - and they knew how to dig ditches, handle sheep, cattle and horses and thrived on hard work and hard conditions. Irish diplomat, Timothy Horan, wrote in 1958: "it is one of history’s little ironies that our immigrants came to Argentina to assist in building up a system and a class the creation of which in Ireland had led to their own emigration".

The City of Dresden carried the largest number of passengers ever to arrive in Argentina from any one destination on any one vessel. British immigrants – and the Irish were British at the time – were highly prized by governments as decent, hard working, God-fearing people who would improve their lot and their adopted land by the strength of their limbs and the sweat of their brows. The Argentine government agents in Ireland - J. O’Meara, and John S. Dillon, a brother of the famous Canon Patrick Dillon who founded The Southern Cross – made effective sales pitches for Argentina as "the finest region under the southern cross".

Unfortunately honesty was not among O’Meara’s or Dillon’s virtues - both of them were Irish. To get their commissions they lied through their teeth and told the desperate Irish they would have houses to live in, seed to sow, machinery to work with, and the most fertile land in the world to farm. They said a famous patriarch priest and benefactor, Fr. Anthony Fahy, had his own bank to finance all of this. At the time, Fr. Fahy was almost twenty years dead and buried!

It had taken O’Meara and Dillon more than two years to get 2,000 people together to fill the City of Dresden. The delay was caused by a press campaign conducted by influential Irish and Anglo-Argentines in Buenos Aires who knew perfectly well that the promises made by these two Argentine government agents in Ireland would not be fulfilled.

Nevertheless, O’ Meara and Dillon left no stone unturned and even "decrepit octogenarians" were accepted for the voyage. According to The Story of the Irish in Argentina, a book by Thomas Murray published in 1919, rumor had it "convicts undergoing terms of imprisonment in Limerick and Cork jails who were released on condition they would not return to Ireland," were also on board.

The City of Dresden, built in Glasgow in 1888 for Norddeutscher Lloyd as an immigrant ship, could carry 38 first-class, 20 second-class and 1,759 third-class passengers. On the voyage to Buenos Aires some passengers died at sea, probably due to lack of food and water.

Serious difficulties immediately arose when the ship docked in Buenos Aires. After nineteen days at sea, the passengers arrived undernourished and dehydrated. They had sailed from Cobh – "the holy ground" - on a bitterly cold winter’s day into a heat beyond their wildest imagination. The food and accommodation O’Meara and Dillon had promised them in Buenos Aires simply did not exist. The only lodging available, the Hotel de Inmigrantes, was, according to La Prensa, a "pigeon house in the Retiro". It was known as the Rotonda and was located where the Mitre terminal of Retiro railway station is today.

"It was a piece of cruel burlesque to speak of the place as a hotel, for there were no beds; the people had to sleep huddled together on the bare floors, and there was scarcely any food provided, although the government was spending one million dollars a year to provide accommodation to newly-landed immigrants," Reverend John Santos Gaynor wrote inThe Story of St. Joseph’s Society published in 1941.

The plight of the immigrants was compounded because Argentina was at that time going through a boom in immigration and 20,000 people were arriving at the port of Buenos Aires every month. The City of Dresden and the Duchesa di Genovacarrying 1,000 Italians arrived on the same day. It was a veritable Tower of Babel for the incoming Irish who could not understand a word of Spanish or Italian, the linguas francas on the teeming docks where husbands were separated from wives, children from parents, brothers and sisters from each other.

"The Immigration Department of those days was, like most other government departments, mostly an institute for the upkeep of party hangers-on who had no thought of honestly earning their salaries", Murray wrote. In The Southern Cross, Father Matthew Gaughran O.M.I. who was in Argentina on a fund-raising mission wrote that "anything more scandalous could not be imagined. Men, women and children, whose blanched faces told of sickness, hunger and exhaustion after the fatigues of the journey had to sleep as best they might on the flags of the courtyard. Children ran around naked. To say they were treated like cattle would not be true, for the owner of cattle would at least provide them with food and drink, but these poor people were left to live or die unaided by the officials who are paid to look after them".

The local Irish and Anglo-Argentine community as well as the British Consulate made appeals to the community on behalf of the immigrants in The Standard, The Buenos Aires Herald, and The Southern Cross. Temporary accommodation was found for families in stables on the Paseo de Julio which were, according to La Prensa, "an immense pool of putrid, stagnant, filthy water". They were later moved to a hovel in Plaza Constitución and to a shed near the port on 25 de Mayo. Young single women and girls were sent to the Irish Convent on Tucumán street.

Nevertheless, according to The Southern Cross, "young girls of prepossessing appearance were inveigled into disreputable houses – a swell carriage with swell occupants drives up, promises of a splendid situation are made and accepted, and away go the unsuspecting girls". Thus began a long tradition of Irish whores in the squalid, now-gone-red-light port area of Buenos Aires and some of the most famous "madams" were reputed to be Irish!

A lucky few of the immigrants found employment with rich families and landowners in the Irish and Anglo-Argentine community. Quirno Costa, the Argentine Foreign Minister, took a number of families to work on his estates. Renowned tailor, hosier and hatter, James Smart, offered work to any tailors on board at his business on Piedad street. Some others found their way to Rosario in the province of Santa Fé, and others to Quilmes, Zárate and Mercedes in the province of Buenos Aires.

For the great majority of the immigrants however, there was nothing and the trail of broken promises continued. One colony offered free to each family a two-room house on a 50-hectare ranch. The only requirement for ownership was to live on and till the land. After two years, the family would receive its title deed. If an additional 100 hectares were purchased at $4 a hectare, a team of bullocks, a plough, and fifty sheep would be also thrown in for good measure. The families that entered into the agreement toiled and tilled their land but the deeds, the bullocks, nor the machinery were ever forthcoming.

According to The Standard, a group of families were offered farm employment and were taken by train 200 miles into the province of Buenos Aires. At a railway station next-door to nowhere the train stopped in the middle of the night. The guide told the immigrants they had arrived, to get off and wait for him while he went to the farm to fetch transport. He never returned!

This was mild compared to what happened to the colonists who reached Napostá, north of Bahía Blanca. David Gartland, an Irish-American businessman who had started a colony there, offered each family 40 hectares, 1,000 pesos at nine-percent annual interest and 12 years to pay back the loan.

When the would-be colonists got to Napostá, they had no luggage. It had been sent on separately and was "lost". The land was there to work but there were no houses and no way to build them because Gartland did not have enough money to finance his project. Those who had tents lived in them and those who did not lived under trees or in ditches, neither of which were very plentiful on an open, windswept plain, dry and dusty in summer, cold and wet in winter.

Dublin-born Fr. Matthew Gaughran was their only true friend. He discontinued his fund-raising, traveled to Napostá and lived for some months with the poor unfortunates attending their spiritual needs. "The immigrants eked out a miserable existence for two years. The land was unsuitable for agriculture", wrote Gaynor of the St. Joseph’s Society, "the death rate was terrific: over 100 deaths in two years. In March 1891 the colony was broken up and 520 colonists trekked the 400 miles back to Buenos Aires". Some of them never made it and fell along the wayside broken in spirit and utterly destitute.

The City of Dresden affair did not go unnoticed. The Archbishop of Cashel, T.W. Croke, minced no words and left no one in any doubt about his feelings in an 1889 letter to Dublin’s The Freeman’s Journal : "Buenos Aires is a most cosmopolitan city into which the Revolution of ’48 has brought the scum of European scoundrelism. I most solemnly conjure my poorer countrymen, as they value their happiness hereafter, never to set foot on the Argentine Republic however tempted to do so they may be by offers of a passage or an assurance of comfortable homes".

Such reports effectively finished any further organized emigration from Ireland to Argentina. In May 1889, The Southern Cross wrote: "if the Argentine government should have employed agents in Ireland to dissuade people from coming to this country, they could not have succeeded better than they have done through the services of Messrs O’Meara and Dillon…Whoever in the old country may have previously approved of this country as a field for immigration will do so no longer and the occupation of the agents is gone forever".

For its part the M.V. City of Dresden sailed the seven seas – Europe and America north and south, Australia and the Far East, Suez and South Africa – until it was sold to the Houston Line in 1903 and renamed "Helius". In 1904 it went to the Union Castle Line and was laid up until Turkey purchased it in 1906 and renamed it "Tirimujghian" to sail the Black Sea where it was sunk by a Russian torpedo in the early days of World War 1.

Big Y results for the Morgan's of Limerick

In previous articles, I discussed how analysis of my autosomal DNA matches allowed me to connect with several Morgan cousins that ultimately led to the discovery that my Morgan line extends back into Limerick in the 1600s (see here). Subsequent DNA analysis confirmed the connection back to Edward Morgan 1774-1836 & his wife Jane Dwyer, and also established the Y-DNA signature of the Morgan's of Limerick (see here). Y-DNA analysis of a fifth male Morgan cousin (PM) confirmed that the Y-DNA of the Morgan's of Limerick had been passed down virtually unchanged since the 1650s and supported the validity of the genealogical research back to James Morgan (born about 1655) and his wife, Susan Allen (see here). 

This current article discusses the results of Big Y testing on four of the five Morgan cousins, what it tells us about how they are related to each other, and if it helps confirm or refute family lore of a link to the Morgan's of Tredegar in Wales.

What do the Big Y results tell us about how the test-takers are related?

So far, five men are included in the Morgan's of Limerick group. They have all done an initial Y-DNA test (assessing between 37 & 111 STR markers) and 4 of them have now completed Big Y testing. The Big Y test assesses over 200,000 SNP markers and about 800 STR markers. The first 111 STR markers are reported on the public Results Page of the Spearin DNA Project along with the "terminal SNP" or "Haplogroup" identified from analysis of the Big Y SNP data (5th column in the Results table). 

The five Morgan men in the project showing their Haplogroup assignment
(in numerical order, the men are PM, FM, JM, GM & TM)

The results of the Big Y tests place the Morgan's of Limerick firmly on the Tree of Mankind. Whereas previously, their earlier Y-STR results had shown that they belonged to group I-M223 (and they were further predicted to fall somewhere below the downstream SNP L623), the new Big Y data provides much greater fine-detail and places them more precisely on the Tree of Mankind, namely on the downstream branch characterised by the SNP marker FTD50467. 

In addition, 3 of the men (GM, TM & FM) sit on a branch further downstream, characterised by the SNP marker FTD44505. This simply indicates that the latter three men share a common ancestor some time after (i.e. more recently than) the common ancestor they all share with PM. In other words, PM has the SNP marker FTD50467, but does not have the SNP marker FTD44505.

The following is their list of ancestral SNP's (from upstream to downstream i.e. oldest to most recent) showing just how much further downstream of the earlier SNPs they now sit, thanks to the Big Y data ...

• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 > S21760 > L623 > S20076 > Y30838 > FTC63003 > FTD50467 > FTD44505

The approximate ages of each of these branches can be viewed here.

The placement of the Morgan men on the Tree of Mankind is illustrated graphically on the Group Time Tree below (click here to view it online). This shows that all 4 Big Y test-takers (from top to bottom: PM, GM, TM & FM) sit on the branch characterised by the SNP marker FTD50467. And again, 3 of the men (GM, TM & FM) sit on a branch further downstream, characterised by the SNP marker FTD44505. 

Group Time Tree for the Morgan's of Limerick

The Group Time Tree diagram also gives crude dates for the ages of each genetic branch (along with ranges around each estimate, indicated by the error bars on either side of the red and blue circles). The specific age estimates for each branch (and the ranges) are as follows:

• FTD50467 ... 1638 (95% Confidence Interval 1437-1782) - see here
• FTD44505 ... 1749 (95% Confidence Interval 1571-1870) - see here

These crude age estimates give us an idea of when the common ancestor for each branch was born, and are often referred to as TMRCA estimates (TMRCA = Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor). So this means (based entirely on their Big Y data) that GM, TM & FM share a common ancestor who lived roughly about 1749, and all 4 men share a common ancestor who lived roughly about 1638 ... give or take 150 years ... I did say they were crude!

Note that each of these branches consists of a “block” of several SNP markers, but each branch is named after the “lead SNP”. Thus, the FTD50467 branch is characterised by a 3-SNP block, and the FTD44505 branch is characterised by a 2-SNP block. The practical significance of this is that more branches may be formed as new people take the test and “split” an existing block into 2 parts (and thus form a new branch). 

Big Y Block Tree diagram showing the number of SNPs associated with each branch

Can we identify the common ancestor TM & FM share with the other Big Y test-takers?

We know from genealogical records that PM & GM share the overarching common ancestor James Morgan (born c.1655). This corresponds roughly with the age estimate for FTD50467, the overarching SNP marker for this group of 4 men. We also know that TM & FM must connect somewhere on GM's line because they share the additional SNP FTD44505 with GM, but PM does not.

Known genealogical relationships between the 5 Morgan men
(click to enlarge)

We also know that TM has an MDKA (Most Distant Known Ancestor) called John Joseph Morgan (born 1837), and FM has an MDKA called James Morgan (born 1827). The question is: where does TM's ancestral line and FM's ancestral line connect to the ancestral line of GM?

We can logically deduce that the downstream SNP marker FTD44505 arose some time at or after Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680. If it had arisen in his father (James Morgan 1655), then it would have also been passed down to PM along his ancestral line. But because PM tests negative for this particular SNP marker, it has to have arisen some time after James Morgan 1655. We don't know the precise person in which it arose but it could have been his son, grandson, great grandson, etc. Hence, we can safely deduce that TM & FM have to sit somewhere at or after Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680. This is the upper limit of where TM & FM might connect to GM's line. And it also indicates that Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680 was their common ancestor, but not necessarily their Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA).

We can also put a lower limit on where they might connect (with a reasonable amount of confidence). The Morgan ancestors of TM & FM have been well-researched and we can be reasonably confident that they are accurate as far back as their respective MDKAs (1837 & 1827). Similarly, there is good genealogical evidence for the Morgan ancestors of PM & GM back to at least 1774, and reasonable evidence back to 1655. This places a lower limit for the connection to GM's line at the sons of Edward Morgan 1774. In other words, it is likely that TM & FM connect to GM's line of ancestors somewhere in the 4 generations between Lt Edward Morgan 1680 and the sons of Edward Morgan 1774, inclusive. 

The family tree for the Morgan's of Limerick can be found on Ancestry here. Let’s look at each of the four candidates for the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) …

Patrick Morgan 1812
It seems unlikely that Patrick Morgan 1812 is a common ancestor of TM & GM for the following reasons:

1. TM's MDKA, John Joseph Morgan, was born in 1837 and so could have been fathered by Patrick Morgan 1812, who would have been 25 years old at the time. However, Patrick had a son called John Darius Morgan (born Nov 1847) so it is unlikely that there were two children called John in the same family
2. there is no evidence that Patrick 1812 had a son called John Joseph Morgan 1837
3. Patrick 1812 had children with documented births in Mar 1836, Aug 1837, Feb 1839, Feb 1841, Aug 1843, Sep 1845, etc … so it is difficult to see where the birth of John Joseph 1837 could have occurred among these known births.

Similarly, it is unlikely that Patrick 1812 is a common ancestor of FM and GM. Patrick 1812 would only have been 15 years old when James 1827 was born, he appears to have been married about 1834 (at the age of 22), and did not have any known son called James. So this makes him an unlikely candidate for a common ancestor between FM & GM.

Based on the above assessment, we can effectively rule out Patrick 1812 as a potential candidate for a common ancestor, thus reducing the field of possibilities to the three candidates discussed below.

Edward Morgan 1774
It is possible that TM's MDKA (John Joseph 1837) and FM's MDKA (James 1827) were grandsons of Edward Morgan 1774. Edward had 6 sons and if John Joseph 1837 or James 1827 was a son of any of these, TM or FM might also have matches related to the spouses side of the family. Spouses included Enraght, O’Gorman, Gillespie … and there may be others (as yet undiscovered). It could be worthwhile checking TM's & FM's autosomal DNA matches to see if any of these ancestral surnames occur among their respective matches.

John Morgan 1732
John had 4 documented sons (born roughly between 1770-1790). Spousal surnames include Sullivan, Rose & Dwyer. If this is the connection for TM or FM, it may be beyond the reach of autosomal DNA and thus there may be no autosomal DNA matches to any of these spouses.

Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680
Edward is reported to have had 5 sons (born roughly between 1702-1732). Spousal surnames include Ware, Daly, Hodges … and there may be others. If this is the connection, it may be beyond the reach of autosomal DNA. Nevertheless, it could be worthwhile exploring TM's & FM's autosomal DNA matches.

Lastly, based on the TMRCA estimates discussed previously, the age estimate of 1749 for FTD44505 falls roughly half-way between John Morgan 1732 & Edward Morgan 1774, making one of these individuals the most likely candidate for the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) of GM, TM & FM.

In summary, TM & FM definitely share Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680 as a common ancestor, but not necessarily as a Most Recent Common Ancestor. The most likely candidates for this MRCA are Edward 1680, John 1732 & Edward 1774. Further research in the records may unearth additional clues.

Would additional Big Y testing help?

Further clarification could be obtained if JM did the Big Y test. JM connects to GM's line at Edward Morgan 1774. GM currently has 3 unique SNPs (called Private Variants) that no one else in the database shares with him (i.e. TM, FM & PM do not have these 3 unique SNPs that GM has). If JM's Big Y results indicate that he shares one (or more) of GM's currently unique SNPs, then this would form a new branch to which TM & FM do not belong. And because we know that the MRCA for GM & JM is Edward 1774, this would mean that the new shared SNP would have been passed down by him to both GM & JM. And because TM & FM do not share this new SNP, it means that Edward 1774 cannot be their ancestor. And this would narrow down the potential candidates for their respective MRCAs to just two - Edward 1680, and John 1732.

Because GM has 3 Private Variants, the chances of a new downstream branch being detected for GM & JM are reasonably good. The Private Variants for each Big Y test-taker can be found via their FTDNA Home Page by clicking on Results & Tools > Big Y > Results > Private Variants tab. The number of Private Variants for the 4 test-takers are as follows: GM (3), TM (1), FM (3), & PM (1).

Are there any additional clues?

I looked for additional clues among the new STR marker results. The tabular display below of the STR results is taken from the public Results Page. It shows where mutations have occurred (in purple & pink). Most of the limited number of mutations occurred in single individuals, but there are a number of places where shared mutations could indicate either a new branch or could simply be parallel mutations (i.e. mutations that occurred independently of each other on separate lines of descent).

Look at the shared purple mutations between PM & FM (rows 1 and 2) on STR markers 10 & 12 (namely dys389i & dys389ii). This could indicate that a shared ancestor passed this mutation on to both of them. However, if this was the case, then it would have arisen quite high up, in one of the more distant ancestors and would have been passed down to all 5 men. This is not the case so it is more likely to be a parallel mutation that arose independently in the 2 descendant lines, and therefore it is not branch-defining and therefore of no help in the current situation.

Similarly, there is a potential shared mutation on rows 3 & 4 (JM & GM) at marker 34 (CDYa). It is possible that this STR mutation occurred in one of GM & JM's ancestors and was only passed down to them and not to the others. If this were the case, this would mean that it must have arisen at or above their known MRCA (Edward 1774), thus ruling him out as an MRCA between them and both TM and FM. However, this particular marker (CDYa) is known to be a very rapidly-mutating marker, frequently flipping back and forth from generation to generation, so this could simply be another parallel mutation, and therefore only limited credibility can be put in the possibility that this mutation is branch-defining. In short, this is very slim evidence.

The STR results of the 5 Morgan men (for the first 111 STR markers)
(in numerical order, the men are PM, FM, JM, GM & TM)
(click to enlarge)

The remaining 700 STR markers were not assessed as they are mainly slow mutating markers and the chances of a branch-defining mutation are small. There is also no easy way to compare these 4 sets of 700 STR markers with each other.

What are the deeper origins of the Morgan's of Limerick?

The nearest genetic neighbour to all 4 of the Big Y test-takers is a man called Murray and he sits on the branch characterised by FTC63003. The common ancestor they share with him lived about 1100 AD. But which came first - the Murray surname or the Morgan surname? or did both surnames arise independently? At this stage we do not know the answer to this question, but it is possible that Mr Murray’s direct male line ancestor’s were called Morgan prior to a surname switch to Murray … or vice versa: there may have been a surname switch from Murray to Morgan. Hopefully we will be able to resolve this question in time as more people test and join the database, but at this stage we do not know which came first - the Murray chicken, or the Morgan egg? or neither?

Group Time Tree showing adjacent branches - see online here

The next nearest SNP-tested neighbours sit on the Y30838 branch and the common ancestor would have lived about 1300 BC. This suggests that our Morgan branch is a relatively isolated branch of the Tree of Mankind with relatively few living descendants (or at least, very few who have undertaken Big Y testing).  It is likely that many descendant lines from the Y30838 branch have died out over time, a phenomenon that is not unusual given that the ancient peoples of Haplogroup I, to which the test-takers all belong, were probably the original hunter-gatherers that moved from mainland Europe into Britain & Ireland at the end of the last ice age (about 12,000 years ago). Survival among this group was less successful than among other Haplogroups (e.g. Haplogroup R1b, which probably represents “the Celts"). Further information on these ancient origins is available on this Eupedia website page.

Is there a connection to any Morgan families in Wales?

There are 3 genetic groups in the Morgan DNA Project that also belong to the I-M223 subgroup of Haplogroup I. These are Group 7, Group 21, & Group 46. There are also six I-M223 project members in the Ungrouped section. Our Morgan group is Group 60. You can see these various groups on the public Results Page of the Morgan DNA Project.

Group 7
The overarching SNP marker for Group 7 appears to be BY159. The list of ancestral SNPs for this group is as follows (that of the Morgan's of Limerick is also included for comparison):

• I-M223 >> CTS10057 > L702 >> Y5670 > Y5671 > Y5672 > Y6998 > BY159 
• I-M223 >> CTS10057 > Z161 >> Y30838 > FTC63003 > FTD50467 

Thus, the common ancestor between you three and the people in Group 7 would have carried the SNP marker CTS10057 and he would have lived about 8500 BC. So there is no close relationship (i.e. within the last 1000 years) with the Morgan’s of Group 7.

Groups 21, 46 & Ungrouped (6)
There are only 3 people in Group 21, and 2 in Group 46, and none of them has done the Big Y test. The same holds true for the 6 members in the Ungrouped section, so all we can do is compare their STR results with ours (Group 60). Below are the STR values for each group / individual with yellow highlights indicating any differences from our STR values. From this we can see that the other I-M223 Morgan’s are not closely related to our group. In fact, the minimal Genetic Distance (i.e. number of mutations) between our group and the others varies from 12/37 to 21/37 (i.e. there are 12 to 21 mutations among the first 37 markers). This indicates quite distant relationships between them and us. 

Comparison of STR values between the Morgan's of Limerick (Group 60) and other Morgan families

For completeness, it would be nice to get Big Y tests from at least one person in each group (and all 6 of those in the Ungrouped section). These results would probably confirm that our Group 60 is not related to any of the others within the last 1000 years.

What about the story that the Morgan's of Limerick descend from a junior branch of the Morgan's of Tredegar? Here we run into problems, because, as far as I can ascertain, there is no descendant of the Morgan's of Tredegar in the Morgan DNA Project, or the entire FTDNA database for that matter. And the reason for this is that many of the descendant lines of this particular family are reported to have gone extinct. This story is covered in this short YouTube video here.

So even if the Morgan's of Limerick do descend from a "junior branch" of the Morgan's of Tredegar (according to Burkes' Peerage 1925 & 1937), this may be impossible to prove as there are no known descendants of the Morgan's of Tredegar. And even if there were, none of them appear to be in the FTDNA database, and even if they are, none of them have done Big Y testing.

The entry for the Morgan's of Old Abbey in Burkes Landed Gentry from 1925 with annotations by Prof Wardell (who probably submitted this family history to Burkes in the first place). Note the comment in the 2nd line under the heading "Lineage": The family now dealt with claims descent from the Llangattog branch of the Welsh House of Tredegar.

Summary & Conclusions

Big Y testing of 4 of the 5 Morgan's of Limerick has revealed the following:

1. they sit on an isolated branch of the Tree of Mankind with nearest genetic neighbours (Murray) related by a common ancestor who lived about 1100 AD.
2. the deeper origins of the Morgan's of Limerick remains obscure and there is no DNA evidence (as yet) to support a connection to Wales or to the Morgan's of Tredegar.
3. the SNP marker FTD50467 arose in James Morgan c.1655 or one of his immediate male forbears.
4. the SNP marker FTD44505 arose somewhere between Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680 and one of the sons of Edward Morgan 1744.
5. TM & FM definitely share Lieutenant Edward Morgan 1680 as a common ancestor with GM and with each other.
6. the Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA) that TM & FM respectively share with GM are either Edward 1680, John 1732 or Edward 1774.

Next Steps could include identifying additional Morgan men to do the Big Y test so that the fine-scale branching pattern of this particular family can be further elucidated.

Maurice Gleeson

April 2023

Morgan's of Limerick now validated to the 1650s

In July 2022, Y-DNA results came back from the lab for a new Morgan test-taker. The individual concerned (PM) lives in Australia and thanks to extensive genealogical work by his 1st cousin-in-law (LM), we can now verify that the Y-DNA signature of the Morgan family has been passed down unchanged since the 1650s. This new discovery represents another significant step in our endeavours to uncover the history of the Morgan's of Limerick.

Back in 2017, I made a major breakthrough on my own Morgan line and connected it to the Morgan's of Old Abbey & Dunmoylan in Co. Limerick (see previous blog post here). These Limerick Morgan's were the subject of years of research by Professor John Wardell in the early 1900s, prior to the fire in the Public Records Office in 1922 that destroyed much of the primary documentation. Thankfully, Professor Wardell's notebooks survived as well as his transcriptions of many of the wills, probate and land deeds associated with the family. This breakthrough on my particular Morgan line added 8 generations and 23 additional ancestors to my family tree. And that is quite a breakthrough!

The next question to address was: is family lore true - that the Morgan's of Limerick are indeed related to the Morgan's of Tredegar? The latter were a very powerful landowning Welsh family that gave rise to countless members of parliament and included barons, lords, and viscounts. Their seat was Tredegar House just outside Newport in Wales, and they are the ancestors of a host of famous people.

Famous descendants of the Morgan's of Tredegar
(from famouskin.com)

To address the above question, we undertook Y-DNA testing of various known descendants of the Morgan's of Limerick and the initial results are discussed in this article here. These results established the Y-DNA signature of the Morgan's of Limerick and indicated that it had been passed down unchanged to Morgan descendants living today since at least 1774. The new results now push that timepoint back to the 1650s. Here's how ...

The earlier results showed an exact match (GD 0/37) between GM & JM. These indicated that the Y-DNA signature had been passed down unchanged to both descendants from their common ancestor - Edward Morgan, born 1774, who married Jane Dwyer (making GM & JM, known 4th cousins).

The new results (from PM) were also a match to GM & JM (GD 4/37) and indicated that the Y-DNA signature had been passed down with only minor differences to all 3 descendants from their common ancestor - James Morgan, born about 1655, who married Susan Allen (making PM a documented 7th cousin once removed to GM & JM). These results also lend support to the validity of the genealogical research. The lines of descent are summarised below.

Direct Male Line descendants of the Morgan's of Limerick
(click to enlarge)

There are two other Morgan's in the diagram above who also share the same Y-DNA signature (namely I-M223). This suggests that they too descend from the Morgan's of Limerick but we do not know exactly where they fit into the wider family tree because they have Brick Walls in the early 1800s. It is possible that Big Y testing will help clarify this question and for that reason we are encouraging these Morgan descendants to do the Big Y test. In November 2022, two people undertook to do the test (GM & PM) and we are hoping that others will join them soon.

The Big Y results will also reveal if the Morgan's of Limerick are related to other I-M223 Morgan's within the Morgan DNA Project. Currently, there are 67 distinct genetic groups within the project. The Morgan's of Limerick are Group 60 and there are two other groups who carry the I-M223 signature - Group 7 and Group 21. In addition, there is a single Morgan individual in the Ungrouped section who is also I-M223.

Several of the 22 members of Group 7 have done the Big Y test and this reveals that this group has the following ancestral SNPs:

• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > L702 > S22311 > L703 > S12195 > S21579 > Y5670 > Y5671 > Y5672 > Y6998 > BY159 > FT6428 > FT6496 > FT4915 > FT4930

Neither member of Group 21 has done Big Y testing but using the Nevgen Haplogroup Predictor, their downstream SNP could be one of the following:

• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > L702 ... (and maybe subsequently > S22311 > L703 > S12195 > BY166184)
• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 ... (and maybe subsequently > CTS4348 > L801 > Z178 > Z165 > CTS1977 > Y4946 > Y5282 > Y11919 > M2379 > S8522)

The downstream SNPs for the Morgan's of Limerick have previously been predicted to be:

• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 > L623

However, using the Nevgen Haplogroup Predictor, a different prediction is obtained:

• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > L702 ... (and maybe subsequently > S22311 > L703 > S12195 > BY166184). For reference, the age estimate for BY166184 is at least 1850 BC.

Based on these predictions, there may be a match to either group. Only Big Y testing will clarify this point. But if there is a match, then this could indicate that one of these groups (7 or 21) may represent descendants of the Morgan's of Tredegar.

You can view a short 15-minute video about my initial breakthrough and the subsequent Y-DNA testing of the Morgan's of Limerick on this link here.

I look forward with anticipation to the new Big Y results.

Maurice Gleeson

Nov 2022

The Y-DNA signature of the Morgan's of Old Abbey & Dunmoylan

Both the Spearin and Morgan families have lived in Limerick for many generations. We know quite a lot about them because they were landed gentry and some good records survive relating to the more senior branches of the family. Members from both families worked as local militia or as part of the Royal Irish Constabulary. And there have been several marriages between the two families over the years - Lieutenant Edward Morgan married Alice Spierin in 1701 and Patrick Spierin married Mary Morgan in 1828. They would have been my 6 times and 3 times great grandparents respectively.

The two Spierin-Morgan marriages in my ancestry
(click to enlarge)

Connecting with the Morgan's ... after & before 1750

Several years ago, through DNA, I connected with my Dad's 4th cousin George Morgan. George had documentary records that connected our two families and extended our Morgan ancestry back to the 1600s to the Morgan's of Old Abbey & Dunmoylan (about 7.5 miles northwest of Rathkeale, Co. Limerick). The direct male line pedigree of this family is supported by reasonably robust documentary evidence back to about 1636 but prior to that the evidence is less robust and more open to question. I'll be posting another blog post assessing the documentary evidence in the near future. 

These Limerick Morgan's had a long-held belief that they were descended from the Morgan's of Tredegar (near Newport in Wales). Apparently a cadet branch (i.e. junior branch) of the Tredegar Morgan's came over to Limerick some time in the 1600s. And if this is true, then our Morgan's apparently have a connection to JP Morgan, Captain Morgan (rum), and Princess Diana. You can read about how George and I connected with each other in this previous blog post.

Since then, DNA has confirmed the connection between (at least) 38 of the descendants of Edward Morgan 1774-1836 & his wife Jane Dwyer (my 4x great grandparents). This is summarised in the diagram below (with living people privatised) but you will need to click on it to see an enlarged version. More detailed information on many of these descendant branches can be found in my "Dublin Spierin's 2012" family tree on Ancestry. These 38 descendants did autosomal DNA tests (mainly at Ancestry or FTDNA) and these tests have a reach of about 250 years or thereabouts, which should allow us to connect with a common ancestor born about 1750. In order to connect with ancestors further back than 1750, we need to turn to a different type of DNA test ... the Y-DNA test. This is the only hope we have of confirming a connection to Wales.

Morgan descendants who have DNA-tested (ancestors to the left, descendants to the right)
(click to enlarge)

Y-DNA is only passed from father to son and thus tracks back along the direct male line. This makes it an excellent tool for researching surnames (which also track back along the direct male line). Following an electronic "mail shot" in August 2020, several direct male line Morgan descendants were identified and approached for Y-DNA testing. As a result, we now have Y-DNA results for three male Morgan's who have tested so far. Below is an assessment of what the results tell us.

Who has tested their Y-DNA so far?

My cousin George (GM) tested his Y-DNA back in 2017 and he had only one match (suggesting that he had quite a rare genetic signature). This single match was another Morgan (TM) whose ancestry went back to Limerick but who had a Brick Wall at 1837. The results of a third male Morgan (FM; Brick Wall at 1827) came back from the lab this month (Oct 2020) and his only matches on his Y-DNA-67 are GM & TM. We are also expecting Y-DNA results from a 4th Morgan (JM) from Australia and these should be available within the next 6-10 weeks. JM has documentary evidence that connects his Morgan line with mine and cousin George's. So altogether, we will have tested 4 male Morgan’s with ancestry that goes back to Limerick. 

Direct Male Line pedigrees of Morgan men, including those tested thus far
(click to enlarge)

Below is a summary of the current test-takers, their MDKAs (Most Distant Known Ancestors on their Morgan line) and the tests they have undertaken - the Y-DNA tests assess 37, 67 or 111 markers respectively; FF stands for Family Finder (which is FTDNA's autosomal DNA test); and Ancestry refers to the Ancestry autosomal DNA test. The Big Y test is the ultimate Y-DNA test and no one has undertaken this to date - it may be of some use in the future but that possibility has not been assessed as yet.

MDKAs & tests taken by the Morgan men
(click to enlarge)

Note that GM and JM have a documented connection that goes back to 1636 but FM and TM have a Brick Wall in their family tree at 1827 & 1837 respectively. In other words, we currently do not know how and where FM and TM connect to the longer pedigree of GM & JM. However, given that the Morgan's of Limerick are supposed to have arrived there some time in the 1600s, we know that the connection with FM & TM will probably be some time in the 1700s or late 1600s.

What do the Y-DNA results tell us?

I’m going to discuss the results under several headings:

• the deeper origins of the Morgan direct male line
• the STR results
• TMRCA estimates
• the STR mutations
• Summary & Next Steps

There are two types of Y-DNA marker that you can test for, namely STR markers and SNP markers. STR stands for Short Tandem Repeats and SNP stands for Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. You can read more about these two types of DNA marker here:

• Tests for STRs: Y-DNA-37, Y-DNA-67, Y-DNA-111 ... Respectively, these assess 37, 67 & 111 markers on the Y-chromosome.  SNP data is not included in these tests, but we can predict what top-level SNPs someone is likely to carry based on his STR results, and knowing his SNP profile helps us place him on a specific branch of the Tree of Mankind.
• Tests for SNPs: Big Y (or SNP Pack)

The two types of Y-DNA marker provide us with different kinds of information, but all of it is useful in helping to explore the origins of people with the same or similar genetic signatures. 

GM & FM did the Y-DNA-111 test; TM did the Y-DNA-67 test; and JM is undertaking the Y-DNA-37 test. 

The Deeper Origins of our Morgan ancestors

All of the Morgan men are predicted to belong to Haplogroup I. This is one of the major genetic groups within Europe and you can read more about it by clicking on this Eupedia page here. The Morgan men have been allocated to a subgroup within Haplogroup I characterised by the SNP marker M223. This allocation is written as I-M223. This SNP marker (like all SNP markers) not only defines a particular subgroup (subclade) of men but also the branch of the Tree of Mankind on which they sit. 

The M223 branch is relatively "upstream" (i.e. relatively distant), as opposed to "downstream" which is relatively recent (i.e. towards the present day). This particular SNP marker arose about 15,000 years ago, somewhere in central Europe. However, the Haplo-I Predictor gives us a "more downstream" SNP prediction and suggests (with 87% probability) that the Morgan men belong to the downstream subgroup I-M223-Cont2c which is associated with the SNP marker L623. [1] This is still relatively upstream and was formed more than 4700 years ago. L623 has the following SNP Sequence (i.e. the sequence of SNP markers characterising each branch of the Tree of Mankind as one moves from the upstream ancestors towards the downstream descendants):

• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 > L623

GM has also joined the I-M223 Haplogroup Project at FTDNA and the Administrators there have placed him in the group 1.2.2.2.1.2 (Cont2c Group 2). This also supports the prediction above. Note the variety of different surnames in this particular group (i.e. Robb, Osterberg, Wilding, Gonzalez, Powell & Lutz). This suggests that the descendants of this particular subgroup have expanded all over Europe. Apparently this L623 subgroup is very rare and (to date) has only been identified in Scotland and Ireland (see section I2a2a3 on the Eupedia page).

GM sits in the Cont2c group of the I-M223 Haplogroup Project
(click to enlarge)

We would need to undertake the Big Y test to confirm that the Morgan men sit on this particular branch and this is something we might consider at a later stage. The Big Y test would also tell us what further downstream SNP markers the Morgan men possess.

Putting the L263 SNP marker into Rob Spencer's SNP Tracker tool gives us a crude (but very pretty) picture of the possible migration route of the people who first carried the L263 SNP marker. Like all human beings, our journey starts in Africa more than 250,000 years ago, we moved across the Arabian peninsula some 60,000 years ago, and from there into southern Europe, and across to southern Britain some 5000 years ago. It would be another 4000 years before we became Morgan's. And (if the family lore is correct) we have only been in Ireland for the last 400 years.

Crude migration pathway of the men who carried L623

However, although these deeper origins of our Morgan line are nice to know, we are more interested in our connections within the last several hundred years. And to explore this further, we turn to the STR results.

STR Results of the Morgan men

When comparing their STR results, all of the Morgan men are close matches to each other. How closely or distantly they are related is assessed by the Genetic Distance (GD, first column below) which is the number of steps away from an exact match. For example, if two men were being compared on their first 37 markers, an exact match would have a GD of 0/37.

At the 67-marker level of comparison, my cousin George only has two matches in the entire FTDNA database (over 700,000 men) and they are FM and TM. His GD to them both is 3/67. Similarly, FM & TM have a GD to each other of 4/67.

Y-STR matches of GM
(click to enlarge)

These results are further evidence that the Morgan genetic signature is fairly rare, and in addition suggest that the Morgan men all share a common ancestor some time in the last several hundred years … but when?

Estimates of Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA)

We can get some idea of how long ago their common ancestor lived by clicking on the orange TiP icon underneath each of their matches’ names. This brings up the TiP Report and by resetting the Display to “every generation” we can see that the midpoint (50% level) in the range of probabilities is closest to 8 generations, with a (roughly) 95% probability that they are related within the last 16 generations. Translating this into years (by allowing 30 years per generation) gives us 240 years ago for the midpoint level and 480 years ago for the 95% level. And this translates into 1710 and 1470 respectively (by subtracting the years from 1950, which we can take as the approximate year of birth of the Morgan men who have tested). 

TMRCA estimates give a range of probabilities for when the common ancestor lived
(click to enlarge)

It is important to emphasise that these estimates are very crude and should be taken with a large pinch of salt, but they do give us some idea of the time period in which the common ancestor might have lived (and it certainly was not more than 1000 years ago).

Also, these estimates are in keeping with what we would expect based on the documentary evidence i.e. a common ancestor some time in the 1700s or late 1600s.

Visualising the Mutations in STR Values

Lastly, on the Project Results page of the Spearin DNA Project, I have grouped all three men together in the group entitled "Morgan's of Limerick" and here you can see a comparison of their STR results. The names of the STR markers are at the top of the page and the values for each marker are the string of numbers beside each person's name. Any differences in the marker values are indicated by the pink and blue squares (pink indicates an increase in value, blue indicates a decrease). You can see that all three men match most of each other's marker values exactly, and it is only a few of the markers where there is a difference. These differences are what go to make up the Genetic Distance calculations discussed above.

STR marker values for the three Morgan men showing mutations in pink & blue
(click to enlarge)

Summary & Next Steps

So, putting this all together, what do the Y-DNA results tell us so far? 

The first big message is that the three Morgan men have a shared Morgan ancestor and he probably lived some time in the 1600s or 1700s. 

All three men have ancestry that goes back to Limerick but at this stage we don’t know how FM & TM connect to each other, or how they connect to the extensive pedigree of GM & JM (which we can refer to as the main Morgan line). Further research in the surviving records may help solve this particular mystery. Also, because FM & TM have Brick Walls that are within the reach of autosomal DNA testing (which has a reach back to 1750) it may be possible to use autosomal DNA (e.g. the Ancestry test) to identify some of their 3rd or 4th cousins, and this information could help us determine where the families of FM & TM connect to the main Morgan line. We are also helped by the fact that the number of possibilities for the common ancestor is quite limited ... given the fact their MDKAs were born in 1827 & 1837 respectively, it is likely that FM & TM's ancestral line connects with the main Morgan line sometime at or before 1800, and (because we have identified a lot of ancestors above this point) there are a limited number of people that it could be (assuming that the list is comprehensive, which of course may not be the case).

Direct Male Line pedigrees of Morgan men, including those tested thus far
(click to enlarge)

So, in summary, the Y-DNA results we have collected so far have allowed us to characterise the Y-DNA signature of the Morgan’s of Old Abbey & Dunmoylan in Limerick. Autosomal DNA results (from over 38 testers) have supported the accuracy of their family trees, and also have linked other Morgan descendants (e.g. women, and those not on a direct male line) to the main Morgan line. 

As for next steps, a fourth test is underway (JM from Australia) and his line connects with the main Morgan line in 1774 (we have a solid paper trail for this). And I am hoping we will have a 5th test in due course (and that person has a paper trail back to 1655).

After that the next step is to see if we can bridge the gap between Limerick and Wales. The Morgan’s of Old Abbey & Dunmoylan had a family lore that they were descended from a junior branch of the Morgan’s of Tredegar (near Newport in Wales) whose Morgan surname was a fixed inherited surname since at least the 1400s (the family being aristocracy). However it remains to be seen if a) any descendants have survived to the present day, and b) have been Y-DNA tested, and c) have avoided any DNA switches (NPEs) along their direct male line (apparently there are 3 known DNA switches on this line so this could represent a major challenge to establishing a link between the Irish & Welsh branches of the family).

And further autosomal DNA testing (preferably with Ancestry, as it has the largest database) will help other Morgan families to connect with the main Morgan line and, with a bit of luck, take the jump with the rest of us back to Wales.

Everyone is welcome to join the Spearin DNA Project, no matter what gender you are or what type of DNA you have tested - that way you can collaborate with other people in the project and keep up to date with any project progress reports. If your DNA is already in the FTDNA database, simply click on this link here and follow the instructions to join the project. If you have tested with another company, you can simply transfer a copy of your DNA results to FTDNA for free (instructions here) and then join the project.

Other direct male line Morgan's are welcome to test and join the project. I recommend starting with the Y-DNA-37 test from FTDNA and upgrading only if need be. If you are a woman, or not on the Morgan direct male line, I recommend testing with Ancestry and transferring your data to other companies (including FTDNA) for free - that way you get more value for money.

Maurice Gleeson

Oct 2020

Update December 2020

The Y-DNA-37 results for the 4th Morgan to test (JM) have just come back from the lab and he is an exact match to GM (i.e. Genetic Distance 0/37). This confirms that JM & GM are very closely related and supports the accuracy of the genealogical data that describes their common ancestral couple being Edward Morgan 1774 & Jane Dwyer (in green below). It also confirms that there has been no DNA switch (i.e. NPE) on the respective direct male lines of JM & GM since 1774.

Direct Male Lines of the Y-DNA tested Morgan men
(click to enlarge)

The results of the first 37 STR markers for the 4 Morgan men tested to date
(click to enlarge)

I am still hoping to recruit more Morgan men, in particular, descendants of James Morgan 1655 & Susan Allen (in orange above). I will try to encourage a few people to get tested over the Christmas Sale period.

And when the British Library opens again, I will need to do some research work on some relevant books therein, including Burke’s Peerage and similar volumes.

Maurice Gleeson

Dec 2020

Footnotes

[1] the Haplo-I Predictor gives us a "more downstream" SNP prediction and suggests the following 3 possibilities for downstream subgroups with strongest probability (87%) for the first one:

• I-M223-Cont2c => 87% ... associated with SNP marker L623, which has the following SNP Sequence (i.e. the sequence of SNP markers characterising each branch of the Tree of Mankind as one moves from the upstream ancestors towards the downstream descendants):
• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 > L623
• I-M223-Cont1a => 6% ... associated with SNP marker L1198, which has the following SNP Sequence:
• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 > L801 > Z165 > CTS6433 > S2364 > S2361 > Z171 > CTS8584 > Z185 > Z180 > Z166 (a.k.a. L1198)
• I-M223-Cont2a => 5% ... associated with SNP marker CTS6433, which has the following SNP Sequence:
• I-M223 > P222 > CTS616 > CTS10057 > Z161 > L801 > Z165 > CTS6433

This predictor uses out-of-date information relating to Haplogroup I and the second possibility in particular may no longer apply.