Hello cousins, below is a DRAFT of an article I am thinking might be of interest for our Coffey Cousins newsletter. However I may be in over my head, and invite your comments, thoughts and corrections.

DRAFT #2:

COFFEY FAMILIES: DNA AND IRISH ORIGINS

By Fred Coffey

I recently became aware of a web page www.irishorigenes.com, owned by a biotechnologist Dr. Tyrone Bowes. His proposal was to “Use Your DNA to Rediscover Your Irish Heritage”, using his web site as one tool. I decided to buy a one-year subscription ($40), and see if I could learn anything of interest about us “Coffey Cousins”.

His project has a couple of interesting databases to draw upon, although I suspect much of the information could be learned from other sources. However it seems well organized, and it has a slick system for presenting Ireland maps of Irish counties, showing distributions of surnames and locations of clans. Here’s what it has to offer about our “Coffey” name:

(Sample map offered by Dr. Bowes follows – but may need to be left out of newsletter because of graphics and colors?)

Those of you who have read the books written by Marvin D. Coffey in the 1980’s and early 1990’s will recall that his discussion of “Ancient Origins” also postulated 3 main septs: (1) was to the south, in the Munster district, around County Cork, which would also encompass Kerry and Tipperary. (2) was around Westmeath in the middle, and (3) was to the north.

For the latter, Marvin was focused on counties Galway and Roscommon, where many Irish lost their lands in the 17^th century. But also in the north is County Down, which is near Belfast in Northern Ireland. On Dr. Bowes map, Down seems to be the only Northern Ireland county with a large Coffey population.

Now, Lorie Okel and I are co-administrators of the “Coffey Surname DNA Project” (visit www.coffey.ws/FamilyTree/DNA ). Can we tie Coffey DNA profiles from there to any of the above? The first obvious problem is that we don’t have just 3 or 4 distinctly separate DNA groups to tie to the above clans, we have 17 – and that’s not counting some 7 individuals/groups with Coffey DNA, but surnames that are NOT Coffey! How can we say which individual or group has claim to the DNA of the “Estimated 3-4 founding ancestors”?

Much of this “DNA diversity” developed in America, and we have stories explaining how that came about. And there are certainly similar stories within Ireland, but we don’t have details. In any event, such diversity is common across DNA projects.

I do feel very good about one group. We have six individuals in a group we have already been calling “County Meath Group”. And they mostly arrived separately as immigrants, indicating origins in the adjacent counties Meath, Westmeath, and Dublin. This suggests they were all coming from a well-established “Clan” of Coffey families in that area?

There’s also another reason to firmly believe that our “County Meath Group” has strong roots in the Meath/Westmeath area. They have genetic DNA matches to 36 different Egan/Keegan names, and Dr. Bowes identifies the neighboring counties of Roscommon and Offaly as being the genetic homeland of the Egan Clan. Also interesting is that while Coffey/Egan/Keegan are clearly related, there is a lot of genetic diversity within both groups. To me, this suggests that they have all been in this region for a VERY long time, and the y-DNA has had time to gradually evolve in varied directions.

(Interestingly, Dr. Bowes offers viewers samples of five “Case Studies” he has done, and one of those is “Egan – A Case Study” that he did for a good friend Dr. Colin Gerard Egan. And I can see Colin has an exact 12-marker match to one of our “County Meath” Coffey men. However Colin’s relationship has to be fairly distant, since it drops out at 25- and 37-marker levels. There are other Egan/Keegan men who match “Coffey” at up to 63 out of 67 markers, and that suggests an extremely solid relationship. Bowes postulates that there are two related Egan Clans, and I think “Coffey” may be closer to the one most distantly related to Colin.)

Moving on, there’s also a second distinct Coffey group we’ve been calling “Northern USA” (because of where most of them settled). They are also represented by immigrants arriving separately, with some claiming roots in County Cork.  Again, this suggests they come from a common “Clan”, and the adjacent counties of Kerry/Cork/Tipperary areas seem a quite plausible homeland.

THESE two “Coffey Clans” may fit, but this is NOT very satisfying to most of our newsletter subscribers. That’s because most of us (including me!) descend from our project’s largest DNA group, which we call the “Edward Group” (and I’m including here the “Peter Group”, which DNA tells us is closely related). What are OUR Irish origins?

First, let’s observe that we’re only talking about two original immigrants. The reason there are so many thousands of us descendants in the USA today is that those two immigrants got here very early, and had very prolific families. Edward arrived in the late 1600’s, and Peter in the early 1700’s. And the DNA says Edward and Peter were related. The relationship could be close (maybe Edward’s father was Peter’s grandfather?) or could be within the 3 or 4 prior generations.

Further, we have never (yet) seen a Edward-DNA-matching descendant from ANY later immigrant. If Edward and Peter’s “clan” members were common in Ireland, surely we would have seen others by now? So I suspect our ancient ancestors were relatively few, and maybe not a major “clan”?

Now let’s begin to really stretch for connections: It has been speculated that Edward may have left Ireland because of some connection to the land confiscations in Northern Ireland. And Dr. Bowes mentions one Coffey genetic homeland county as “possibly Down”, which is in today’s Northern Ireland. Otherwise Northern Ireland has few “Coffey” residents.

There’s another “Down” straw to grasp: The Edward Group has a good genetic match to a “Wilson”. And Dr. Bowes’ maps show there are thousands of “Wilson” concentrated in the Northern Ireland counties of Down and adjacent Antrim. He describes the Wilson name as “An English and Scottish Surname associated with 16^th and 17^th Century settlement in Northern Ireland.”

(No, I don’t think Edward Coffey’s line acquired Wilson DNA, although I can’t rule it out. I think it more likely that the tested Wilson line acquired Coffey DNA. If Edward had acquired Wilson DNA, then I would expect to see large numbers of Wilson matches. But out of 545 members in the Wilson DNA project, we only match one individual. But Northern Ireland could be where a Wilson female met a Coffey male? My Wilson contact’s line is from Scotland, but he believes he had “gypsy” ancestors travelling back and forth between Scotland and Ireland.)

Another clue?? Peter Coffee came to America on a prison ship from England. What better place to get in trouble with the English than County Down in Northern Ireland? Even today, the Irish and the British can't get along in Belfast!

But there is another genetic straw that pulls us Edward Descendants in the opposite direction, to the south. The Edward group also has good matches to a Kehoe, to a Keogh, and to a Kaho. Dr. Bowes shows the genetic homeland of Kehoe as Wexford, and one of the Kehoe contacts I made indicated ancestry from there. That’s not too far from Tipperary, which Bowes identifies as a Coffey homeland. One speculation is that Coffey/Keogh/Kehoe/Kaho were once pronounced similarly in Gaelic, and what we see is just a separating name evolution?

For both “Wilson” and “Kehoe”, we have pretty well ruled out any connection between our families in America.

Of course, what I would really like to see is a significant number of DNA tests on actual Irish “Coffey” presently living in the various Irish counties. However to date we have only two DNA tests on men living in Ireland – they match each other, but they don’t match ANY of our American “Coffey/Coffee” men! (One lived in Dublin and one in Galway – but the Dublin man thought his family came from Westmeath.)

So I can't really prove anything. Oh well, speculation is fun.