Finding Grace - the aims of the project and how to contribute

What's it about?

In 2030, we will be celebrating the 500th birthday of Grace O’Malley, “the Pirate Queen” (1530-1603). Grace is one of the most important figures in Irish history and a source of great national pride. Her many exploits are both legendary and inspirational, with successive generations of people worldwide becoming enthralled with her life and her legacy. She was a fearless soldier, and a shrewd politician, the protective matriarch of her family and her tribe. It is no wonder she has rightly become a national hero and a feminist icon.

Brighter Futures presents “Grace O’Malley, Our Pirate Queen” at St Patrick’s Day Parade, 2017.
(CC BY-SA 2.0) From https://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/33398361582/in/photostream/

As part of commemorations and celebrations surrounding this 500 year anniversary, plans are afoot to identify as many of Grace’s descendants and close relatives as possible ... using DNA. Grace was married twice and there are many known descendants of her two husbands – Bourke’s & O’Flaherty’s. But less well known are the descendants of Grace’s immediate male O’Malley forbears.

And that is the starting point for the Finding Grace project. We aim to establish the Y-DNA signature of Grace's immediate male forbears and by doing so, we will provide a way for people to discover if they have a direct genetic connection to Grace O'Malley ... via the O'Malley side of her family.

Using a variety of documentary sources (including validated pedigrees from the Office of the Chief Herald), we have built out Grace’s family tree and have currently identified living descendants of ...

a) her reported brother Melaghlin (5 people) ... Line 1 (green)

b) her reported uncle Dermot, born c.1490 (6 people) ... Line 2 (blue)

c) her reported great great uncle Donal c.1430 (2 people) ... Line 3 (purple)

These 3 lines of descent are summarised in the diagram below.

Direct male lines of descent from Grace's great great grandfather (click to enlarge)
- 13 descendants have been identified so far

All 13 descendants are on a direct male line of descent from Grace’s great great grandfather Dermot 1400. The theory is that all 13 men will have received their Y-DNA (virtually unchanged) from Dermot 1400 … that is, unless there has been some sort of a DNA switch along the way that has resulted in a break in transmission. And if there has been, DNA will reveal it. It may also indicate if some genealogies are false, and if the wrong descendants have been assigned to the wrong ancestor.

In the best case scenario, people on all three lines would match each other fairly closely, indicating that they all sit on the same general branch of the Tree of Mankind. However subtle differences would allow us to distinguish the three lines from each other, perhaps by the presence of three distinctive SNP markers, one for each branch. In this case, anyone who subsequently tested positive for one of the specific SNP markers could be reliably identified as a direct descendant of Line 1, 2 or 3 respectively.

And furthermore, anyone who can link themselves to that particular line (either through genealogical records or any kind of DNA, not just Y-DNA) would also be able to claim to be a direct descendant of that particular line. In this way, any descendants of Grace O’Malley’s immediate male forbears could be identified:

• People who link to Donal's line (Line 3) will be 3rd cousins of Grace, about 10-12 times removed.
• People who link to Dermot's line (Line 2) will be 1st cousins to Grace, about 12-14 times removed.
• And people who link to Melaghlin's line (Line 1) will have Grace as their aunt ... but with about 10-12 "great"s in front of “aunt”.

How can I help?

We are currently applying for various funding schemes but there are several ways that you can help the project.

If you are a male O'Malley, do the Y-DNA test and join the project. If you are not a male O'Malley, find one and get them to test. We recommend to do the Y-DNA-37 test initially. You can order it from the following link but please contact me for a $40 discount code (my email is below) ... https://www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=Maley

If you know someone who is on one of the direct male lines of descent described above, then please let us know. We would like to offer them a free Y-DNA test. In particular we need more recruits for Line 3.

Another way you could help would be to contribute to the General Fund. We will need to spend $400 within the next 3-4 weeks so it would be great if we could raise that amount before then. If you wish to contribute to the Finding Grace project, please make a donation to the General Fund. All donations are welcome (no matter how small) and you can do so by clicking on the blue Donate button below.

Maurice Gleeson

May 2022

Email: mauricegleeson AT doctors.org.uk

The Kilmilkin O'Malley's (Group 3g) are more than 500 years old [revision: >300 years old]

Some additional Big Y results have just been posted for the newly formed Group 3g (the Kilmilkin O'Malley's) and they tell us a very interesting story.

Four of the 5 people in this group have now done the Big Y test. In my previous post, I described how the first three of these (kits IN102000, 778791, 961903) tested positive for for the SNP marker FTC36168, and two of these three shared an additional SNP marker further downstream (FTC27440). 

The 5 members of Group 3g - note the newly-defined "terminal SNPs" in green text (second-last column)

These results allowed us to say with confidence that the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) for these three initial test-takers (namely Sean na Firinne 1740) carried the SNP marker FTC36168, and subsequently passed it down to all 3 of his descendants. Similarly, we concluded that the MRCA for participants 778791 & 961903, namely Tomás 1808, carried the SNP marker FTC27440. These "triangulation points"are indicated by the green triangles numbered 8 and 9 respectively in the diagram below.

The Kilmilkin O'Malley's (Group 3g) showing their lines of ascent
to Sean na Firinne O'Malley 1740, their MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor)

The latest results are for member 590126 and, like many people in the O'Malley DNA Project, his

O'Malley line hits a Brick Wall in the early 1800s.

But the next point is really important. His results place him on a branch adjacent to the first three test-takers discussed above. You can see where they all sit in relation to each other on the Tree of Mankind in the diagram below (from the Big Y Block Tree). The latest Big Y test-taker sits on the branch characterised by the SNP marker FT280617 and which includes 2 other SNP markers, including FT113717 which is deemed to be his current "terminal SNP".

This placement has important implications because it allows us to estimate how long ago the common ancestor of all four Big Y test-takers lived. Their common ancestor would have sat on the branch above them all, characterised by the lead SNP BY152739 (he would have carried all 5 SNPs in the "SNP Block" associated with this branch and would have passed them all on to his descendants, including all four of the Big Y Test-takers in Group 3g).

Group 3g on the Tree of Mankind - "Your Branch" indicates where the latest Big Y tester sits. The first 3 test-takers sit on the adjacent two branches to his right. 

But judging by the number of SNPs below this point (about 9 - see column to the left) we can get a crude idea of when this overarching common ancestor lived. Allowing an average of 80 years per SNP, gives us a time estimate of 9 x 80 = 720 years. If we subtract this from the presumed average year of birth of the test-takers (say 1950), then this gives us a very crude date of (1950-720=) 1230 AD. We should add a broad range around this estimate as it is based on very crude calculations, so let's say +/-300 years. This gives us a date range of 930-1530 AD. [see revised age estimates discussed in the update at the end of this article]

But even allowing for the youngest limit of this very wide range (1530), this means that the O’Malley surname has been associated with this particular DNA signature for at least 500 years (more or less). This serves to illustrate how the Big Y results of people who have Brick Walls around the 1800 timepoint, can be very useful to the interpretation of the data we are currently collecting for the Finding Grace project. These latest results indicate that Group 3g is in fact a very ancient branch of the O'Malley's.

Also, because the latest test-taker does not sit on the same branch as the other 3 Big Y test-takers in the group, we can conclude that he does not descend from Sean na Firinne O’Malley 1740, the reported ancestor of the other three, but rather, from a distant ancestor of Sean na Firinne, probably someone who lived prior to 1500 AD and possibly closer to 1200AD. 

Another view of Group 3g on the Tree of Mankind (click to enlarge)
See DCG cladogram at https://dcg.genealogy.network/R1b-BY145238

A final important point to note is that there are a number of people called Burks who sit on the same branch as the latest test-taker. I had initially thought that the Group 3g O'Malley's may have carried the Burks surname before carrying the O'Malley surname. But because the DNA signature for these Burks and O'Malley men is definitely Gaelic (i.e. they all fall below M222 which is associated with north/west Ireland and Scotland) rather than an Anglo-Norman DNA signature, this would further suggest that there would have been a prior switch to the Burks surname. And because we know the Anglo-Norman Bourke's came into Ireland after 1200 AD, the switch would have occurred some time after that. So the sequence of surname switches I envisioned would have been something like: Gaelic surname c.1000 AD > switch to Burks (after 1200 AD) > switch to O'Malley surname (before 1740).

But with these latest results, an alternative hypothesis (and possibly more plausible) is that the O'Malley name came first and there was a surname switch to Burks somewhere along the line i.e. Gaelic surname c.1000 > switch to O'Malley surname > switch to Burks (after 1200 AD). 

But what was the "Gaelic surname" that was the first to be associated with Group 3g's DNA signature? Surnames on adjacent branches include: Dougherty (x3), Kerrigan (x1), Conway (x1), O'Neill (x1). Could it have been one of these?

This will require some further investigation in due course.

Maurice Gleeson

May 2022

Update August 2022:

The new "Discover More" feature on the FTDNA website uses a new age estimating technology that provides us with better age estimates for the various branches of the Tree of Mankind. Using this new feature, we can now assign updated age estimates for each of the branches associated with Group 3g. The age estimates are referred to as TMRCA estimates, where TMRCA stands for "Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor".

Since the original article above, there have been some slight refinements to this portion of the Tree of Mankind and the revised diagram is included below. Dates for the relevant branches are as follows (given as a central estimate and a range):

FT116143 ... 950 years ago (+/-300 years) ... see more details here

BY152739 ... 450 years ago (+/-200 years) ... see more details here

FT280617 ... 450 years ago (+/-200 years) ... see more details here

FTC36168 ... 350 years ago (+/-200 years) ... see more details here

FTC27440 ... 150 years ago (+/-200 years) ... see more details here

And from these age estimates we can surmise the following:

• the common ancestor for everyone under FT116143 lived about 1100 AD
• the common ancestor for everyone under BY152739 lived about 1600 AD
• the common ancestor for everyone under FT280617 lived about 1600 AD
• the common ancestor for everyone under FTC36168 lived about 1700 AD
• the common ancestor for everyone under FTC27440 lived about 1800 AD

Thus, the common ancestor for the O'Malley's of Group 3g would have carried the SNP marker BY152739 and the revised age estimate for this is about 1600 AD. More specific TMRCA estimates, together with a 95% Confidence Interval, can be found by clicking on the Scientific Details tab. And this reveals that the more specific central estimate for this SNP marker is 1562 AD, with a 95% Confidence Interval of 1368 AD to 1707 AD.

In effect, this means that the O'Malley surname has been associated with this particular SNP marker for at least 300 years, and more like 450 years, but it could even be as much as 650 years.

These TMRCA estimates will continue to evolve over time as more people do the Big Y test and more data accumulates that can be applied to these age calculations.

Maurice Gleeson

Aug 2022