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.