Calhouns and the Y-Chromosome

Many members of the Calhoun family have participated in genealogical genetic testing, particularly Y-DNA testing.  This is the first of two posts that I wanted to devote to what we have learned from these results so far.  Most people participate in genealogical genetic testing because they want to learn something about their own personal ancestry.  However, the crowd-sourced nature of comparative genetics means that everyone’s individual results also tell us something about testers as a population, in this case the Calhoun family.  The conclusions I draw here can and probably will change as more family members participate and we develop an ever clearer picture of the family’s structure.  Although we have learned a lot already, I would encourage all Calhoun family members to join in this effort, whether you know a lot about your own ancestry or not.

Y-DNA Genetic Testing

Modern genealogists and family historians have two parallel tracks of evidence available to them.  One is a paper trail of historical documents, often supplemented with oral history and tradition, stating personal relationships between people.  The other is genetic testing results, which provide evidence of biological relationships between people.  These two tracks provide complementary information, and each can sometimes help to overcome roadblocks in the other.

There are several types of genealogical genetic testing, but Y-DNA testing, which looks only at the Y-chromosome, is the type best suited for the study of males with a particular surname.  This is because the Y-chromosome, found only in men, is passed nearly unchanged from father to son, in the same way that surnames are typically passed down in Western societies.  I say “nearly” unchanged because it does undergo occasional changes (mutations), and these minor differences allow us to compare testers to one another and estimate when their most recent common patrilineal ancestor may have lived.  In general, Y-DNA of men who are more closely related will have fewer differences than those of men who are more distantly related.  Two kinds of mutations are commonly examined for genealogical purposes:  short tandem repeats (STRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).  For further information on how Y-DNA testing works and what the terminology is, a good resource is the ISOGG wiki page on Y-DNA tests.

The Y-chromosome is passed from father to son (green path). Y-chromosomes and surnames are usually co-inherited, in this case the Calhoun surname and a Y-DNA chromosome belonging to haplogroup E. (Modified from Marc McDermott, originally posted at https://www.genealogyexplained.com/dna-testing/y-dna-test/.)

At present, the company that does the most genealogical Y-DNA testing and has the largest match database is FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA).  FTDNA offers both STR testing and comprehensive SNP testing, the latter via a relatively new test called “Big Y”.  In contrast with STR mutations, which change back and forth between states relatively frequently, SNP mutations are very stable, meaning once one occurs, it is unlikely that it will later change back to its original state.  This means the Big Y test provides more accurate results than STR testing alone.  However, it is more difficult to perform:  while STR tests only need to examine a relatively small number of predetermined locations on the Y-chromosome, comprehensive SNP tests like Big Y require a more open-ended search that interrogates hundreds of thousands of locations, not only determining the states of previously known SNPs but also looking for new ones. 

Surnames and Y-DNa

The earliest heritable surnames in Britain are just under 1,000 years old.  When two men whose most recent patrilineal common ancestor lived less than 1,000 years ago share the same surname, the simplest explanation is that their common ancestor had that surname, with both men inheriting it by unbroken patrilineal descent.  When two men whose most recent patrilineal common ancestor lived more than 1,000 years ago share the same surname, it is not by common inheritance, and several alternative explanations are possible.  Some examples:

• The surname was acquired independently by several founders in early medieval times, and each man has inherited the name from a different founder.
• At some point in the ancestry of at least one of the men, the surname was acquired from an adoptive father, not a biological one.
• At some point in the ancestry of at least one of the men, the biological father was not the mother’s husband.
• At some point in the ancestry of at least one of the men, the surname was acquired from the mother (perhaps because she was unmarried), not from the father.

In the first example above, each independently founded family with the same surname would be of comparable age, resulting in––theoretically, at least––comparable numbers of modern male-line descendants.  The last three examples above are referred to in genetic genealogy as non-paternity events (NPEs), and they can occur anytime between the early medieval period when surnames were first acquired and the present day.  Generally speaking, the more recent the NPE, the fewer the number of possible descendants in the present day.

The calhoun Surname project

Because Y-DNA tests are so often used to study ancestry within a surname group, FTDNA hosts client-administered research projects for many surnames.  One of these is the Calhoun Surname Project, which as of this writing has 416 members, roughly 250 of whom have posted Y-DNA testing results for comparison.  Of the 250 tests, roughly 100 include Big Y SNP profiling.  Because Big Y is newer and more expensive than STR tests, fewer people have taken it, but the numbers are growing, and I would encourage any Calhouns who are considering testing for the first time, or who have only taken STR tests, to take or upgrade to Big Y.

The Calhoun testers fall into several Y-DNA genetic groups (haplogroups) that are for all intents and purposes unrelated to each other.  (In other words, with common paternal ancestry long before the surname era.)  As of this writing, the Calhoun Surname Project identifies 8 haplogroups that include more than one tester with the name Calhoun, at least one of whom has tested to 111 STR markers or more.  The following table shows, for each of these 8 groups, the haplogroup name (as per the Project), the number of testers to date, and a description of the group members:

Group	Size	Members
E1b1b1	107	Calhouns, Kilpatricks, McCarters from Scotland, Ireland, America, and elsewhere.  Common haplogroup of the Calhouns and McCarters BY5775 (ca. 1100 CE).
R1b1a2_A	12	Mostly descendants of Samuel, son of William Cahoon (1633-1675), Scottish prisoner transported to Massachusetts.  Possible haplogroup BY76688 (ca. 1550 CE).
R1b1a2_C	12	Mostly descendants of William Cahoon (1633-1675), Scottish prisoner transported to Massachusetts, by various sons.  No Big Y testers.
R1b1a2_N	5	Calhouns with Irish roots.
R1a1_A	4	Colquhoun family from Argyll, Scotland, including descendants of Archibald Colquhoun (1758-1839) and Mary McCorquodale, and Malcolm Colquhoun (1767-1823) and Christian McCorquodale.
R1b1a2_G	3	Calhouns with Scottish roots.
R1b1a2_M	3	Stated descendants of Patrick Calhoun Sr., grandfather of US Vice President John C. Calhoun.  (Others of his descendants belong to E1b1b1.)
J2	2	Samuel Colhoun of Ireland and his son John Colhoun (1845-1916) of Trinidad and Tobago.

Note that one of these haplogroups, E1b1b1, is more than twice as large as all of the others combined.  I suggest that this haplogroup represents the Y-DNA lineage of Humphrey of Kilpatrick, 13^th century founder of the Calhoun family, for several reasons:

• It includes by far the largest number of testers, suggesting it has the most descendants today and is therefore the oldest of the groups above. (However, there are alternative explanations for this.)
• The SNP common to all Calhouns in this group, BY5775, is believed to have arisen about 1100 CE, give or take a couple of centuries, which is consistent with the adoption of the Colquhoun name by Humphrey of Kilpatrick around 1240 CE.
• It includes Calhouns from many families, from Scotland, Ireland, America, and elsewhere, suggesting it predates the dispersion of the family from its Scottish homeland.
• Some of the closest genetic relatives of the Calhouns within this group have variants of the name Kilpatrick, which is consistent with a name change from Kilpatrick to Colquhoun by Humphrey.

All the other haplogroups above are much smaller, and the common ancestors of the Calhouns in each appear to be much more recent, than in E1b1b1. This suggests that all of the other seven groups above originated with breaks in the co-inheritance of Y-DNA and surname from the original lineage, i.e., NPEs.

Result of an NPE (break in the co-inheritance of Y-chromosome and surname). In this case the result of the NPE is a man inheriting his mother’s Calhoun surname but his biological father’s Y-chromosome haplogroup R. His Y-DNA genetic matches would be to the Smith family. (Modified from Marc McDermott, originally posted at https://www.genealogyexplained.com/dna-testing/y-dna-test/.)

The fact that there is only one haplogroup with both a large number of testers and common ancestry in or before the 13^th century supports the idea that the Colquhoun name was adopted only once in medieval times, by a single individual.  Based on the data we have now, no other Calhoun haplogroups are as old as the 15^th century, which is when some Scottish commoners began adopting the surnames of their clan chiefs.  In my earlier post about the origin of the Calhoun family, I stated that I saw little or no evidence of this practice within the Colquhoun clan, at least on a wide scale, and this is why.  Of course there are many assumptions in this hypothesis, including “every male founder has a comparable number of patrilineal descendants”, “there is no bias in who decides to take a Y-DNA test”, etc.  I recognize this, but it’s the best I can do for now, and I welcome any comments.

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Thanks to Marc McDermott for kind permission to use and modify his figure, and once again, special thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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The “Big Four” Sources in Calhoun History and Genealogy

The Calhoun family is now about 800 years old, and it has been remarkably prolific, with many thousands of members living today.  This also means there are many people interested in the its history and genealogy, and much has been published in the last 150 years or so.  I am fortunate to live near one of the largest family history libraries in the US.  Not long ago I paid a visit, and I found there were roughly a dozen books on the Calhoun family on the shelves, not even counting manuscripts and books about other families that also touched on the Calhouns.  Many of these were specific to American families by the names Calhoun, Cahoon, Cahoone, etc., but some reached back to the family’s origins in Scotland and residence in Ireland as well.

For those of us in America, the Irish branches of the family, established in the 1600s thanks to the Ulster Plantation and other migration events that brought Scots to Ulster, are of outsized importance.  During the 1700s, many immigrants came to America directly from Scotland, but they were outnumbered nearly two-to-one by their Ulster Scot cousins coming from Ireland.  The ancestry of American Calhouns as a whole, therefore, is biased towards those family branches that were established in Ireland during the 1600s.

I would assert that, of all the various works that have been published about the Calhoun family, four have been especially influential on American Calhoun researchers, genealogists, and historians.  Each of these secondary sources has its own area of focus as well as its own strengths and weaknesses.  I call these the “Big Four” of Calhoun research.

Fraser

The first of the four is The Chiefs of Colquhoun and Their Country, a two-volume set by William Fraser, published in 1869 in Edinburgh.  When it comes to expertise in Scottish history and genealogy, Sir William N. Fraser (1816-1898) was the real deal.  He was a Scottish solicitor (lawyer) who early in his career became involved with a number of cases requiring antiquarian and genealogical research, so he developed a high degree of expertise in this field.  Using this expertise, he eventually wrote histories of 20 or 30 of the most notable families in Scotland.  As far as I know, he was not a Colquhoun by relation, but we are very fortunate that the Colquhouns were among the families he chose to write about.  He was eventually knighted for his contributions (becoming Knight Commander of the Bath), and the University of Edinburgh established in his honor the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography, which continues to this day.

An expert in deciphering medieval manuscripts, Fraser notes his primary sources for the Colquhoun books as family records of the Luss family held at Rossdhu, records from the Duke of Montrose, records of the Camstradden family held by Sir Robert Gilmour Colquhoun of Fincastle, and personal recollections of Sir James Colquhoun, 26^th/28^th of Luss.  The first volume covers the history of the Luss lineage of the family, and the second volume covers the cadet branches of the family as well as descriptions of the Colquhoun family’s territories and transcriptions of medieval charters.

Even a cursory reading of Fraser’s books reveals the thoroughness of his research and the quality of his genealogical work.  Original sources are not only referred to and referenced but quoted directly; these include letters, wills, land deeds, legal documents, and other materials.  As he was a legally trained scholar, his writing is not prone to hyperbole but rather sticks to the facts as he saw them.  I have found what I think are a few minor errors in Fraser’s work, so I believe it is not perfect, but for the most part I accept his pedigrees of the senior Scottish Colquhoun families at face value.

You may recall me complaining in my first blog post about the need to carefully examine derivative sources (of which Fraser is one), so isn’t this acceptance hypocritical of me?  Yeah, kinda.  However, for the time being I am content to use Fraser’s pedigrees because (1) I trust the quality of his research since he typically cites original sources when drawing his conclusions, (2) it would be very difficult for me to access and double check many of the family sources he used (and in the case of older medieval documents, to even understand or transcribe them), and (3) I have not yet been able to bridge the documentary gap in the male line between the last patrilineal descendants of Humphrey of Kilpatrick described by Fraser and the present day, so it is a case of “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”  (The importance of this male line will hopefully become more apparent in a future post on the genetics of the Calhoun family.)

From the standpoint of my own research, the main “weakness” of Fraser is that it focuses solely on the senior Scottish lineages of the family and relies only on source material in Scotland.  The first point is forgivable, since that was his stated intent in writing the books, but the second point means that he missed those biographical details of the family members he covered that pertained to their life and property in Ireland.  In the 1600s, some members of the Luss and other senior Scottish Colquhoun families acquired property in Ireland and/or migrated there, either temporarily or permanently, and yet there is almost no mention of any of this in his work.  This is truly unfortunate, since at the time Fraser was doing his research, many Irish legal documents existed that have since been lost to us forever.  Nonetheless, I’m grateful for the work he left us.

Freely available online: Fraser vol. 1

Freely available online: Fraser vol. 2

Croslegh

The full title of the second source is Descent and Alliances of Croslegh, or Crossle, or Crossley, of Scaitcliffe; and Caddington, of Oldbridge; and Evans, of Eyton Hall, by Charles Croslegh, published in London in 1904.  In this book, there is an extensive chapter on the Calhoun family spanning pages 183-228, and a small chapter on the related McCausland family on pages 229-233.  Charles Croslegh, D.D. (1839-1923), born in Newlands, County Tyrone, Ireland, was the grandson of Letitia (Colhoun) Crossle, hence his interest in the Calhoun family.  He was an Episcopal priest who served a number of parishes in Ireland and England over the course of his career, last serving as vicar at Bradninch, Devon, England from 1897-1917.

Like Fraser, Croslegh was a scholarly man, and in his book’s Preface, he provides a huge list of sources, both personal contacts and documentary sources, that he used during his research.  Furthermore, his referencing throughout the rest of the book is so extensive that even his endnotes have footnotes!  Despite all of this, it is sometimes unclear as to which sources underlie which statements or conclusions.  His pedigree of the Calhouns begins with the first 15 generations of the Luss lineage, from Humphrey of Kilpatrick to Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, taken unchanged from Fraser.

Two elements of Croslegh’s work have had a lasting influence on subsequent researchers of the Calhoun family.  The first is his proposed connection of the Luss lineage to one specific branch of the Irish Colhouns.  Right or wrong, Croslegh was probably the first historian of the family to make such a connection, and it provides a means for Calhouns of Irish extraction to attempt to trace themselves back to the family’s 13^th century Scottish founder.  The specific branch of the Irish Colhouns for whom he made this connection was a landowning family that lived at Crosh, County Tyrone and happened to be the family of his grandmother Letitia.  Solid pedigrees of Irish families from the 17^th and 18^th centuries are exceedingly rare, which leads to the second lasting influence of Croslegh’s work:  a sampling bias toward this family that has affected many later researchers.  As researchers have attempted to trace their own Irish Calhoun ancestors back to the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the Crosh pedigree originating with Croslegh is often the only one to be found, so many people “force” their own lineages to connect to it in the absence of evidence.

Croslegh was an excellent researcher, and he no doubt did the best he could with the source material available to him.  Nonetheless, the critical part of the pedigree connecting the Crosh Colhouns of Ireland to the Luss Colquhouns of Scotland is poorly sourced.  Croslegh admits to this in places, but many subsequent researchers of the family have stripped out all of his caveats and accepted his pedigree without question.  I have often wondered whether Croslegh left any research notes that might provide greater explanation, but I have yet to make inquiries at Bradninch as to where such notes, if they exist, might be held.  It’s on my “to do” list.  I hope to explore the critical connection between Ireland and Scotland posed by Croslegh in a future post.

Like Fraser, Croslegh worked at a time (pre-1922) when many more Irish records survived than they do now.  Also like Fraser, he seems to have done surprisingly little research in the archives of Ireland.  Instead, many of the critical primary source documents he used (wills, leases, letters, etc.) were “in the possession of private families” that were not specified.  He did enumerate many newspapers, periodicals, books, and British Library manuscripts, and he notes as well that he “searched parochial and diocesan registers in England, and in Ireland,” some of which might have been lost in 1922.  Finally, he mentions numerous human sources of information on the Calhoun family and these include his cousins William Colhoun of Toronto and James Colhoun of Alabama (son and grandson of Charles Colhoun of Sixmilecross; see footnotes 45 and 46 on p. 224), Charles Alexander Colhoun (grandson of Charles; see footnote 49 on pp. 225-226), and William Wilson Hanna (grandson of Charles; see footnotes 41 and 42 on pp. 223-224), as well as Captain John C. Calhoun (grandson of the US Vice President; see p. 192).

Freely available online: Croslegh

McPherson

The third source, perhaps less well known than the others but definitely valuable, is Calhoun, Hamilton, Baskin, and Related Families, by Lewin D. McPherson, originally published privately in 1957 but reprinted in 2021 by Hassell Street Press.  Lewin Dwinell McPherson (1876-1964) was a corporate attorney by trade, but he was also an avid genealogist, as was his wife, Hannah Elizabeth Weir.  Over the course of decades, the two of them published several books about their ancestral families, including this one, written when Lewin was 81.  He claims descent from 3x-great-grandparents Archibald Hamilton and Frances Calhoun, hence his interest in the Calhoun family. Both Archibald and Frances were born in Ireland about 1705, immigrated to America about 1733, and later migrated to Augusta Co., VA.  Frances’s ancestry is not documented, but based on religion, migration patterns, and proximity, researchers have suggested that she was a close relative of Patrick Calhoun Sr. (ca. 1683-1741), the grandfather of US Vice President John C. Calhoun.  McPherson (p. 451) cites several sources of family tradition as stating in fact that Patrick Sr. and Frances were brother and sister.

The first thing any reader of this book (at least in its original 1957 printing) will notice is that it is dense, both in terms of content and layout.  It is set in a two-column typewritten format with virtually no whitespace on the pages and no separation between sections, so it can be exhausting to try to read through.  (He doesn’t even waste paper on a full title page!)  However, it is rewarding for those who do, since McPherson packed an extraordinary amount of information into his book, and it is meticulously sourced.  His footnotes come in the form of numerals in the right hand of each column, and they refer to a list of sources that can be found on pp. 353-365.  This reference list is followed by a geographical index (pp. 366-379) and a personal names index (pp. 380-446) of some 24,000 people, including 2,300 Calhouns.

McPherson devoted a significant portion of the book, unsurprisingly, to those Calhouns he knew or believed to be his kin:  descendants of Patrick Calhoun Sr. and Catherine Montgomery (pp. 8-77), and of Frances Calhoun and Archibald Hamilton (pp. 133-208).  However, he also included information about numerous other Calhoun families whose relationship to him was less certain, compiled as the “First Appendix––Calhoun Section” on pp. 78-114.  A postscript to the book (pp. 451 and 453-454) provides a more specific list of these families and the page numbers on which they appear.

Much if not all of McPherson’s research appears to have been conducted in the US using a combination of primary sources, books and articles, and correspondence from other family researchers. His extensive reference list, which includes the names of individuals who supplied information to him as well as the specific primary and secondary sources that he relied on, is invaluable.  Much of the family lore that underlies Calhoun family trees constructed today––some of which I will try to address in this blog––originates with tradition passed down in American Calhoun families, and by identifying the specific letters, manuscripts, and individuals who supplied him with information prior to publication in 1957, McPherson enables us to begin tracing the origins of some of those traditions. Even if for this reason alone, McPherson is a fantastic resource.

Freely available online: McPherson

Orval calhoun (OCF)

Dominating the shelf of the genealogy library is the massive set entitled 800 Years of Colquhoun, Colhoun, Calhoun, and Cahoon Family History in Ireland, Scotland, England, United States of America, Australia and Canada by Orval O. Calhoun, published in 4 volumes between 1976 and 1991.  (The title is a mouthful, so it is often called Our Calhoun Family [OCF] for short.) Orval O. Calhoun (1905-1993) of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada spent at least 18 years of his retirement assembling this history of the family, and it is truly a monumental achievement.  Rather than being restricted to a specific lineage like Luss (Fraser vol. 1), Crosh (Croslegh), or Patrick Calhoun Sr. and his sister (McPherson), Orval’s books include all Calhoun lineages about which he had found or was given information, regardless of their country of residence.  Orval’s own lineage comes from John Colhoun (d. 1853) and his wife, Catherine McIlmurray, of Castletown, County Tyrone, Ireland.  He posits that this John was one and the same as John (b. 1779), the son of Charles Colhoun of Sixmilecross, which if true would make him a close cousin of Croslegh.

Orval’s text strikes a markedly different tone than Fraser’s or Croslegh’s.  For the most part, especially in volume 1, he provides no sources or citations to back up specific facts, and when he does mention sources, it is only in an indefinite way, not connected to any specific conclusion.  (For example, OCF vol. 2 p. 17 lists numerous sources, including “Various Family Bibles, Diaries & Unknown Manuscripts located in Ireland since 1976.”)  This makes it impossible to retrace his steps and generally difficult to separate fact from conjecture from fiction.  Another blogger said it well:

Orval was not a professional genealogist, and he worked from a lot of secondary sources that he had no way of authenticating.  The book should be read primarily as a compilation and narrative rather than as hard-nosed research, though there is some of that.  Many people use the book as their only research, which is a mistake.  As Orval himself pointed out, the book should be a starting point for further research.

Bill Calhoun (http://calhoun-mcknight.blogspot.com/2010/05/colhouns-of-donegal.html)

Orval does state that he performed some original research himself, particularly in Ireland (see for example, OCF vol. 1, p. 30).  Because this research was done between the 1960s and 1990s (in other words, in the post-1922 era), nearly all of the Irish documents that would have been available to him should still be out there and available to us.  I can tell from his text that he discovered most of the primary sources that I have uncovered in my own research, even when he did not reference them explicitly.  This is remarkable, since his research was conducted in the pre-internet age, when records were much harder to obtain and fewer were indexed.  However, he often mentions more exact dates, additional children, personal details, and deeper pedigrees than I have been able to glean from those sources.  As far as my cursory reading of his books has gone, nowhere does he point me to a primary source that would substantiate any of this “additional” information.  Although Croslegh’s research notes have not been located, Orval’s survive and are currently in the possession of an American Calhoun.  I have been told by that owner that much of the notes comprises personal correspondence with family members, but I am hoping that some of them point to primary sources that I have not yet found.

Despite this concern, the pedigrees in Orval’s books now underlie many of the Calhoun family trees posted on the internet, whether the posters know it or not.  Worth noting is that Orval took Croslegh’s somewhat tentative connection between the Colquhouns of Luss and the Colhouns of Crosh in Ireland (also mentioned in passing in McPherson) and not only accepted it without question but expanded on it, adding numerous additional descendants from the early generations in Ireland.  For instance, he increased the number of children of Rev. Alexander Colhoun of Crosh from four (Croslegh, p. 191) to twelve (OCF vol. 1, p. 28), including among his new entries the Patrick Calhoun Sr. (as “James Patrick Calhoun”) and Frances Calhoun covered by McPherson.

I remain skeptical of those portions of the information from both Croslegh and Orval that lack a solid foundation.  Regarding Orval’s pedigrees, my general strategy is to use them as a guide for further research but to assume nothing is confirmed until I have some corroborating evidence.  It is clear from Orval’s passion for the subject that he enjoyed research as much as I do, so I would like to think he would not take offense at this approach.

Not available online; however, some helpful indexes and information can be found here: OCF

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Special thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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