robertmackayclan

Michael, if I hear if people are interested in DNA testing I always send them to you and your web page.

DNA testing is interesting, but I get off on the collection of documents.

Good trip to King Wm. Co. VA. I think, my husband (Irvin), is going to place pictures on your site. You can move them around as you wish.

Good luck with your research.

The problem for me is that this little anomaly won't just disappear. The fact that he matches allelle for allelle with known Robert Mackay descendants and other Mackay matches says that there is a relationship here.

Yes, initially I said he is a descendant based on his story and the fact that we do match so naturally it appeared to be a case of adoption. Now, since you've provided evidence of his Smith ancestors going back to Massachussetts and no documented connection with any Mackay so far the question still remains, why the h*** does it match with our family's signature?

I hope that sometime or another he is able to find evidence that will support his John Dennis being adopted. Question is, was John Dennis Smith his birth name? If not, then it's probably next to impossible to find out what it was originally. I think you've said before that if an adoption took place there has to be a record of it somewhere.

I would pound the counties of Bates Co. & St. Clair Co. MO. IF there was a connection with Charles H. Smith (family living next to his Mendenhall family) and his John D. Smith, then I can trace said Charles H. Smith to Lake Co. IL, where most likely his children were born and then back to Lewis Co. NY living with his father another John D. Smith.

You can find other Smith living in both location. Very possible he (Charles H.) removed with his "relations".

If a relationship can be established between said Charles H. Smith and his John D. Smith of Bates Co. MO, then he could start to collect information in the earlier counties.

I do not have the 1830 & 1840 census on line, so I can not check to see if John D. Smith was living in that location at that time period. The 1820 census for Lewis Co. NY does have a John Smith--but so what !!! Such a common name. It was the census information under Charles H. Smith which stated his father born in MA.

It would be Charles H. & his wife Emily R. were married in NY and removed to IL. I do not think Emily R. would have removed from NY to IL unless with her family or her husbands. It could be her family is also listed on the 1850 Lewis Co. NY. Since I do not know her maiden name, I can't abtract that information. If Mr. Smith can find her maiden name, that would give him another name to help figure out his Smith ancestry.

Now, that's what I would do and perhaps the DNA information in the future will someday make sense.

Since, I really have not studied NY records, I do not know how they are filed and what is available.

Since we are dealing with two scientific approaches to family history, we are no doubt dealing with two sets of facts. One fact on the DNA side shows that we match with Kent Smith's Y-DNA profile. The other set of facts come from the genealogical side and the gathering of evidence on his Smith ancestry.

Somewhere in the picture there are some missing data that would explain why this is the case.

I'm going to post the info. about matches that everyone can read from the FTDNA website.

Michael, if I hear if people are interested in DNA testing I always send them to you and your web page.

DNA testing is interesting, but I get off on the collection of documents.

Good trip to King Wm. Co. VA. I think, my husband (Irvin), is going to place pictures on your site. You can move them around as you wish.

Good luck with your research.

Our Mackay family history wouldn't be as extensive as it is today if it hasn't been for your research and the research of other Mackay descendants willing to take the time to look at original documents. That's what this website has been trying to do when it comes to the Robert Mackay family is present the known facts and not the hype about how we're connected to the Clan Chiefs and Hugh Mackay and Jane Dunbar that I've seen on other family tree records without any proof.

It's also hoped by me with the DNA testing we might find some other Mackay families like Justin Key's and Richard Kee's family and that by researching some of their history they may show a common place of origin which may yield some info. on to our Robert Mackay's place of origin in Europe. I have yet to see the Clan Chief's DNA profile so I don't know if it matches ours in any way or not. There are other Mackay test groups which do not match ours at all which shows that all Mackays did not spring from the same roots as some romanticists would like to believe.

I hope this letter finds everyone doing well.

My name is Kent Smith. I am the GG-Grandson of John D(ennis?) Smith, b. 1851 in Bates Co., MO. His obituary stated that he was an orphan at about the age of 7 (~1858). I have been searching for his parents for about 10 years now with no success. Late last year I submitted my DNA to FTDNA expecting to find a match with someone in the hundreds of Smiths. To my surprise I found some close matches with 4 different McKay (various spellings) submitters. A few months ago I found a match of 65/67 with one David Wilson McKay.

They have traced their McKay ancestry back to Robert Mackay. According to FTDNA I have a certain probability of one of these Mackay men being my paternal ancestor with the following likelihood out of each generation:

Gen 1 - Robert Mackay – 79%

Gen 2 - James Mackay – 70%

Gen 3 - James Mackay – 57%

Gen 4 - Robert T McKay – 41%

Gen 5 - Issac McKay – 22%

I am currently working on searching through each generation to find out who may have ended up in MO where I assume John D Smith’s parents were killed. His obituary only states he went to live with relatives, but nothing about their names. We have no family stories about the family that raised him or why his last name does not match his DNA.

If there is a way I can get a message to the many Mackay researchers about my story to see if anyone might have a family story about a family who died in the 1850s and left a child or children that might help my efforts. I assume I could post it to one of the forums just as easily now that I think of it. J

In case you are interested, here is his obituary from 1947 in Oklahoma.

In memory of John Dennis Smith

I am interested in joining any distribution lists or other information pertaining to the Robert Mackay Clan.

Sincerely,

Kent Smith

Livermore, CA

This was taken from the Family Tree DNA website to explain their theories about matches. I have highlighted the segment about matching with different surnames.

Just as there are surnames which are very common, (such as Smith and Jones), and surnames which are uncommon, there are Haplotypes (a set of results that characterize you on the Y-Chromosome) with a high frequency of occurrence (aka common), and Haplotypes with a low frequency of occurrence (aka uncommon). The 12 Marker result from the Y-chromosome test is called a Haplotype, and can help determine if your DNA sample is common or uncommon.

When you compare a 12 Marker result to another 12 marker result of someone with the SAME surname, and the results match 12/12, there is a 99% probability that you two are related within the time frame included in the MRCA tables. If the match is 11/12, there's still a high probability that you are related IF the 11/12 match is within the same surname. If you compare a 25 Marker result to another 25 marker result for the SAME surname, and the results match 25/25, then there is also a 99% confidence that the two individuals are related…and at a much closer time interval then with the 12 marker test.

If you compare the 12 marker result to someone else who does not have the same surname, but the scores match, you are most likely NOT recently related. When we use the term recently related, we are talking about a time frame within the last 1000 years or 40 generations, a time depth that accommodates the earliest known use of surnames.

According to current theories, we are all related. The degree of relatedness depends on the time frame, or the number generations between the participants and the common ancestor.

We all descend from one single person, but of course the DNA test that we do is not to tell us this obvious fact.

Since we all descent from one person, and then from a few families, and as times goes by those families keep branching out up to the point where we get to our own family nest, it would be natural that when we check our DNA, the less markers we check, the less unique they are, and the more markers we test, the more unique the whole string of markers is. In other words, to go to extremes, if we tested only one marker, we would most certainly match with millions of individuals that shared that marker for thousands of years. But if on the other hand when we test many markers, we will match very very few people that share those same markers. Those would be the ones that are closely related to us.

This is valid when checking our matches on 12, 25 or 37 markers. The likelihood that we will match other individuals with 12 markers is far greater than matching on 25 or 37. Especially if our family descends from a populational group that came from one or a few prolific families thousands of years ago (which is the case for Western Europe). Dr. Luigi Lucca Cavalli-Sforza, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, in his fascinating book: The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolutions says that the total population of Europe was 60,000 people at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. Now Europe has a population of 300 million people. This increase is almost entirely due to a natural increase in population rather then immigration from other continents. Keeping this in mind it is reasonable that many people alive today in Europe will match with other Europeans from BEFORE the time that our ancestors began the adoption of surnames, and when you match someone who has a different surname your first thought should be that the ‘connection’ is distant rather then recent.

Our bodies work as copy machines when it comes to the Y-DNA. You can have a copy machine doing 1,000 copies without a problem, and then, the 1,001 copy may have an "o" that looks more like an "e". And when we use this copy to make additional ones, all the new ones will now have an "e" instead of an "o". This is a simple way to explain how mutations occur in our Y-DNA when it's transferred (copied) from father to son. Mutations don't happen frequently, on the contrary, very seldom, but they can happen randomly in time, which means that I could be one mutation off of my father. That is why all those matches or close matches on 12 markers will in most of the cases go away when they happen between different surnames, and we increased the numbered of markers that are compared: more mutations showing up, which means way back in time when the common ancestor lived.

The only exceptions to this are if an unannounced adoption or false paternity has taken place, but that is difficult to prove, although certainly not impossible.

If two 12 marker results match for two participants with the same surname, and the genealogy research shows a common ancestor in 1835, the DNA test has validated the research and proven that the two descendents are related. In this example, you have two items of evidence to support that the individuals tested are related…a documented paper trail and the DNA results. In addition, the research provided a precise time frame for the common ancestor.

Without the genealogy research, and where 2 participants with the same surname match on the 12 marker test, then the scientific answer to the degree of relatedness is that 50% of the time the common ancestor would have occurred within 7 generations, or within approximately 150 years. The range of generations for the common ancestor extends to 76.9 generations, or almost 2000 years for those cases where there is not a surname in common. Therefore the importance of a surname link is paramount to provide a comfortable conclusion of relatedness. Most of the time random matches with people with different surnames do not stand the test for extended DNA testing. In our case we're one of the exceptions with Kent Smith's profile matching 65/67 with David Wilson McKay's. I have yet to upgrade to a 67 marker test but I'm willing to bet he'll match mine about the same.

While the MRCA tables will give you the general probabilities for relationships on different levels of matching, the FTDNATiP found in your personal matches page will give you probabilities that are specific to others that you may be related.

I hope this letter finds everyone doing well.

My name is Kent Smith. I am the GG-Grandson of John D(ennis?) Smith, b. 1851 in Bates Co., MO. His obituary stated that he was an orphan at about the age of 7 (~1858). I have been searching for his parents for about 10 years now with no success. Late last year I submitted my DNA to FTDNA expecting to find a match with someone in the hundreds of Smiths. To my surprise I found some close matches with 4 different McKay (various spellings) submitters. A few months ago I found a match of 65/67 with one David Wilson McKay.

They have traced their McKay ancestry back to Robert Mackay. According to FTDNA I have a certain probability of one of these Mackay men being my paternal ancestor with the following likelihood out of each generation:

Gen 1 - Robert Mackay – 79%

Gen 2 - James Mackay – 70%

Gen 3 - James Mackay – 57%

Gen 4 - Robert T McKay – 41%

Gen 5 - Issac McKay – 22%

I am currently working on searching through each generation to find out who may have ended up in MO where I assume John D Smith’s parents were killed. His obituary only states he went to live with relatives, but nothing about their names. We have no family stories about the family that raised him or why his last name does not match his DNA.

If there is a way I can get a message to the many Mackay researchers about my story to see if anyone might have a family story about a family who died in the 1850s and left a child or children that might help my efforts. I assume I could post it to one of the forums just as easily now that I think of it. J

In case you are interested, here is his obituary from 1947 in Oklahoma.

In memory of John Dennis Smith

I am interested in joining any distribution lists or other information pertaining to the Robert Mackay Clan.

Sincerely,

Kent Smith

Livermore, CA

We apparently have another person matching our group of DNA testers according to the Key DNA project page. However this individual doesn't match on more allelles than the rest of us which would indicate his connection would be more distant to the rest of us. His earliest known ancestor is Samuel Key, born ca. 1795 in North Carolina. I will see what I can do about adding his record to the group page later. He apparently is close enough for the project administrators to group him with us.

First you need to read records in Bates Co. MO & St. Clair Co. MO to see if there was a blood relationship with your John D. Smith with Charles H. Smith living next to your known Mendenhall family. Their path into MO does not seem to be the same as Smith family.

Through census records the known man Charles H. Smith lived in Lake Co. IL where his children were born and he might have been married ?
So the records of Lake Co. IL need to be read. That county right on the line with Wisconsin (Kenosha) so those records also might be needed.

Then he is found living with his father John D. Smith in Lewis Co. NY, not far from the line with Canada. Those records in that location need to be read. Said John D. Smith might have come into NY from MA. You will have to hope the records exist in NY to say where he lived before that location.

You might be able to find orginial records on line, but in the end I believe you will have to spend $$$ for film rental through L.D.S. library systems.

The above locations St. Clair Co. MO from Lake Co. IL from Lewis Co. NY, I do not see that L.D.S. Family Project Task has records on line for those locations. I do not know about Ancestry.Com.

All of this means, of course, there is no way your Smith line is a descendant of Robert Mackay Sr.

Good luck with your research.

According to Kathleen B. Cory's book "Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry" the most used surname in Scotland is SMITH.

Her book I did not find to be helpful for my research, but others might find useful information.

I used that as an example of the misleading idea people have put forth concerning Clans and Septs. It gives the mistaken idea that people of a given surname are members of a particular clan and that their ancestors came from that region that clan occupied.

Did you know that there is also listed a 'Clan Smith'? Does that mean anyone who has Smith in their ancestry is a member of that Clan?

We can say from our DNA test results that we have a common group of Mackays that our Robert Mackay is part of but what we do not know is where these people called 'home' in the British Isles. It is most likely somewhere in Scotland but we should not assume that it is Strathnaver because that was where the Clan Mackay called home. I do not know if the Clan Mackay chiefs match our group in anyway. I assume they have been tested and that if there was a match we would have been notified so I'm going to say that we do not match them. Nor do we match the profile of Niall of the Nine Hostages in Irish folklore. His DNA group has been established.

Most likely we are one of the numerous Celtic peoples that inhabited the British Isles centuries ago. The surname became established as Mackay and took on variant forms as generations progressed, some of them being Kee and Key and it's not unlikely that we will find other variants. The fact that we've been matching with various people named 'Key' who found their way into England leads me to think that our family did not come from way up north but rather from somewhere in the Scottish Midlands.

Hasn't that been an area you've considered when looking for records in Scotland Dee Ann?

I looked at some Scottish Records for my ancestry John Hampton of Elphinstone, Scotland, only because it was firmly established through records in NJ that's where he lived in Scotland. I really did not find out any more than already reported by others. No DNA studies involved.

This is not the case with our "Robert" Mackay, earliest date 1705 in Monmouth Co. NJ. I am still looking for other records which will tell me where he lived before NJ.

As far as the records in connection with the Mackay prisoners I have not found a record which clearly shows where in Scotland they came from or if they were related. Since your DNA doesn't match with the descendants of Daniel Mackay I am going under assumption that some of the Mackay of 1652 might or might not have been related to each other. I have no idea if other present day descendants of the prisoners have been tested or not.

I have only found two records filed in MA where Scottish locations were given by persons in court records.

For the above Daniel Mackay persons have placed his birth place in Scotland in various computer banks, but they in will not confess, they do not have documents at all, just a computer file.

Unless there is an archaeological program in Scotland where bones are tested for their DNA and this information is shared with your DNA program, then DNA testing is not going to helpful to finding the location of our distant ancestor.

In the examples of famous people-- where I guess they have thousands of known descendants of a particular person, only then science can find a familar pattern of the DNA markers of that distant person.

This is not the case with our DNA problem. You do not know who you are looking for and the documents back into the 1300's do not exist.

You can write all those people who continue to pass around the parentage of Robert Mackay and ask them to supply the documentation back into 1500's

That's what you will need to find a connection with Key, George & Mackay families.

I believe that there are some cases like this. There are some profiles of a certain DNA string that I think came from remains that were tested of some individuals in the British Isles. So far there aren't any that match our profile so I guess they haven't tested the right one.

Of course we know that those people making claims of Robert Mackay Sr.'s parentage have yet to supply the info. as to where they found such information. I know they didn't get it from DNA testing.