July 2023 – Genealogy of the Calhoun Family

Posted on July 25, 2023August 7, 2023 by anton88887 · 4 Comments

The Senior Colquhoun Lines of Scotland

titles and terminology

By Scottish tradition, the chief of the Calhoun family is The Colquhoun of Colquhoun and Luss, who has resided for centuries on the shores of Loch Lomond in Dunbartonshire. He is officially recognized as a clan chief by the Court of the Lord Lyon, the legal arbiter of Scottish heraldry. This entitles him to bear the undifferenced arms granted to his ancestor Sir John Colquhoun, 13^th of Colquhoun and 15^th of Luss, in 1542 by that same court.

As with most Scottish clans, the chief is the senior-most male descendant of the family’s founder, in our case Humphrey of Kilpatrick, who is considered the first chief (i.e., 1^st of Colquhoun). All chiefs who have followed him are numbered consecutively, and I follow the numbering of Fraser, who may or may not have originated the system. In the early generations of the family, their seat was in the Barony of Colquhoun from which they took their name. The chief of the family was therefore also the laird of Colquhoun, with laird being not a hereditary title implying nobility but rather a Scots word meaning specifically an estate owner.

Around 1368, Humphrey’s great-great-grandson Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th of Colquhoun, married the daughter and heiress of Godfrey, 6^th of Luss. Her given name is not known, so she is referred to by Fraser and others, in fairy-tale fashion, as “The Fair Maid of Luss.” With Godfrey’s death around 1385, the male line and surname of Luss came to an end, and the family’s extensive property on the shores of Loch Lomond was inherited by his daughter and her husband, the aforementioned Sir Robert Colquhoun. Evidently the Barony of Luss was a more desirable property than the Barony of Colquhoun, since the Colquhoun chiefs soon moved their seat to Luss, where they have remained ever since. They thus became lairds of Luss beginning with Sir Robert, who succeeded Godfrey as 7^th of Luss. From Robert’s time on, the senior-most Colquhouns have been referred to with two numbers, of the form “Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th of Colquhoun and 7^th of Luss.” Eventually, the lands of Colquhoun passed out of the family’s ownership, and so I take the title since then to mean “5^th chief of Colquhoun [the family] and 7^th laird of Luss [the property].” Whether this interpretation is correct or not, I’m not sure.

I tend to use a shorthand format of my own invention to describe the chiefs succinctly with both numberings. My shorthand for the example above would be “Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th/7^th of Luss.” It is not standard, and I hope no one is offended by this.

On 30 August 1625, the Colquhoun chiefs acquired another hereditary title when King Charles I granted to Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss the rank and dignity of Baronet. The initial grant was a new Baronetcy of Colquhoun in the colony of Nova Scotia in America, to be located near LaHave. In 1704, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20^th/22^nd of Luss, 5^th Baronet, having no male heirs to pass the baronetcy to as required by the original grant, surrendered the title to the Crown and was regranted the same under terms that allowed its succession to his son-in-law, James Grant, who would then become Sir James Colquhoun, 21^st/23^rd of Luss. However, Sir James subsequently inherited the Grant estate, and that original baronetcy passed into the Grant family. James Grant’s son Sir James Colquhoun, 23^rd/25^th of Luss was granted a new title, Baronet of Great Britain, just a few months before his death in 1786, and this new title has been in the Colquhoun of Luss family ever since. The present chief of the family is Sir Malcolm Rory Colquhoun, 31^st/33^rd of Luss, 9^th Baronet of Great Britain.

Again, the position of chief and laird is typically inherited by the eldest son of the outgoing chief, or if he has no surviving sons, the eldest in the family’s male line according to rules of British primogeniture, which I don’t fully understand. However, younger sons from the Luss family sometimes acquired property of their own, either through division of the Luss estate or by marriage into another landowning family. These younger sons therefore established junior lines (so-called “cadet branches”) of the Colquhoun family, named for the property of which they became laird.

Relationships of the various cadet branches to the Colquhouns of Colquhoun and Luss based on Fraser vols. 1 and 2.

The Colquhouns from these families belong to the gentry, the upper social strata of British commoners, and none of them to my knowledge have risen to the peerage (aristocracy). Even Baronets do not belong to the peerage. I’m an American and confess that I’m not used to the terminology of titled gentry and aristocracy (with the notable exception of the Duke of New York, A-Number One [video, with sound], once held by the late, great Isaac Hayes). The table below describes the social ranks to which the Calhoun gentry of Scotland and Ireland belonged, as best I have been able to figure them out. As always, I welcome any correction by those who know more than I do.

Rank	Hereditary	Prefix Title	Description
Baronet	yes	Sir/Lady	Hereditary honor created by James I in 1611 to raise revenue for the crown
Knight	no	Sir/Lady	Non-hereditary; there are several orders, all but one of which fall between baronet and esquire in rank
Esquire	no	none	Traditionally for eldest sons of knights and some younger descendants of peers, but also bestowed by virtue of certain offices
Gentleman	no	none	Generally men of “good social standing” who did not need to work for a living

Genealogical importance of the senior lines

I focus on the Colquhoun of Luss family in this post because of its genealogical importance. Using family records from Rossdhu and Camstradden, Fraser built pedigrees of this family and its connected cadet branches beginning with Humphrey of Kilpatrick in the 13^th century and extending all the way to the 19^th century, an unbroken lineage of Colquhoun chiefs and chieftains. Most of us who are interested in family history and genealogy would love to connect ourselves to such a pedigree, but very few of us (if any) can actually do so. In centuries past, only families who were deemed “important” in some way (namely, those with land, titles, or money) were documented. Such people were a minority, and so for most of us, our paper trail ends in the 18^th or 19^th century.

Can genetic information from Y-DNA help us? In theory, yes. In my earlier post, I stated that Humphrey of Kilpatrick was the patrilineal ancestor not only of males from the Colquhoun of Luss family (prior to 1718) and its cadet branches, but also of all Calhoun males belonging to haplogroup E-Y16733. For most of us, however, there is a five- or six-century gap between Humphrey and our earliest documented Calhoun ancestor. If we can simply find someone who is a patrilineal descendant of Humphrey of Kilpatrick with an unbroken paper trail—namely someone descended from the Luss family or one of its cadet branches—to take a Y-DNA test, he could serve as a “gold standard” for those without such a paper trail. Having this point of reference would not magically create paper trails for the rest of us, but it would at least close the gap between Humphrey and ourselves considerably, since we would have a much better idea of approximately when each of our ancestries branched off from Fraser’s lineage.

Here’s the problem: the male lineages of the Colquhouns of Luss and of every cadet branch of the family have ended. Yes, the Colquhouns of Luss have continued to the present day, but there was a break in the strict father-to-son lineage in 1718 with the death of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20^th/22^nd of Luss, 5^th Baronet. As I mentioned above, he had no sons, and so the family line continued through his daughter Anne Colquhoun, who married James Grant. The present-day Colquhouns of Luss are the male-line descendants of Anne’s younger son Sir James Colquhoun, 23^rd/25^th of Luss, whose Y-chromosome came from the Grant family. The following table describes the fates of the various Colquhoun family branches (source: Fraser vols. 1 and 2).

Family	Founder (First in Male Lineage)	Last in Male Lineage
Luss	Humphrey of Kilpatrick, 1^st of Colquhoun (1190-1260)	Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20^th/22^nd of Luss (d. 1718)
Tillyquhoun (Tullichewan)	Alexander (fl. 1666), third son of Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss	Robert-David Colquhoun, 7^th of Tillyquhoun (d. 1838)
Camstradden	Robert, son of Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th/7^th of Luss (1395-1439)	Sir Robert Gilmour Colquhoun, 17^th of Camstradden (d. 1870)
Kilmardinny	Walter (d. bef 1541), third son of Sir John Colquhoun, 11^th/13^th of Luss	John Colquhoun (7^th generation), d. ca. 1692
Garscube	James, second son of Humphrey Colquhoun, 12^th/14^th of Luss	Property soon reverted to Luss
Garscadden and Killermont	Descendant of John, second son of Robert Colquhoun, 6^th of Camstradden	James Colquhoun, 7^th generation from John (d. 1801)
Balvie	Humphrey, second son of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss	No children, did not continue
Kenmure	Patrick, third son of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 6^th/8^th of Luss	William Colquhoun Stirling of Edenbarnet (d. 1866)
Barnhill (Bonniel, Bonhill)	John Colquhoun of Milton, 1543 charter from Sir John Colquhoun, 13^th/15^th of Luss	Walter Colquhoun, 8^th of Barnhill (d. 1827)

Despite this, there is some good news. Just because the titled positions above have all ended in the male line, that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to find male-line descendants. In my next post, I will list many younger sons from the various family lines above who are unaccounted for (by Fraser, at least) and who could have male-line descendants alive today. My sincere hope is that eventually someone with a solid, documented pedigree back to someone in that list will be identified and would be willing to take the Big Y test. More soon!

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

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Posted on July 9, 2023August 8, 2023 by anton88887 · 6 Comments

Calhoun Haplogroup E-Y16733

As determined by the Calhoun Surname Project at FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA), most Calhoun men today (or at least, most of those who have taken Y-DNA tests) belong to haplogroup E1b1b1, also called E-M35. I and many others believe that the Calhouns in E-M35 are the direct patrilineal descendants of Humphrey of Kilpatrick, later of Colquhoun, 13^th century founder of the Calhoun family. In my previous post, I outlined the evidence for this, the main points being that (1) the common patrilineal ancestor of the E-M35 Calhouns lived around the time that Humphrey did, and (2) some of their closest genetic relatives, connecting shortly before Humphrey’s time, are named Kilpatrick or Kirkpatrick, consistent with a 13^th century name change from Kilpatrick to Colquhoun. I want to devote this post to the E-M35 Calhouns not only because it is Humphrey’s haplogroup and bears on the origin of the family, but also, more selfishly, because it’s the haplogroup of my own Calhoun ancestors.

In fact, the SNP M35 that defines haplogroup E-M35 is more than 25,000 years old, so the Calhouns represent only a minuscule fraction of all E-M35 men alive today. It is more precise to refer to these Calhouns as belonging to E-Y16733, a much more recent haplogroup, which at about 1,300 years old predates the surname era by just a few centuries. It includes all of the E-M35 Calhouns and their Kilpatrick relatives, and very few others.

The SNPs that occurred between M35 and Y16733 tell us about the migration patterns of ancestors from prehistoric times until about 700 CE, while the SNPs that occurred after Y16733 tell us more specifically about the origins and the structure of the Calhoun family, in some cases revealing important genealogical information. Some of the SNPs in the ancestry of the E-M35 Calhouns include the following, from oldest to youngest:

SNP	Age (YA)	TMRCA (YA)	Likely Place of Origin
M35	34,000	25,000	Ethiopia
M78	20,000	14,000	Egypt
V13	8750	5075	Between Anatolia and Kosovo
BY3880	4250	4200	Kosovo?
Y16729	4200	4100	Eastern Europe?
Y16721	4100	4000	Europe?
Y16733	1325	975	Britain or Flanders?
BY5775	925	725	Scotland, in the Kilpatrick or Calhoun family
FT350465	725	575	Scotland, in the Calhoun family
FT32806	725	675	Scotland, in the Calhoun family
BY5778	725	475	Scotland, in the Calhoun or McCarter family

YA = years ago. TMRCA = time to most recent common ancestor. Ages and TMRCA are based on estimates from FTDNA Discover; alternative estimates can be found at YFull. Places of origin of SNPs are usually more difficult to determine than ages, and these are my best guesses based on recent studies.

Migration of Calhoun family’s Ancestors in ancient times

The places and ages of formation of these SNPs tell the story of the migration of the Calhouns’ patrilineal ancestors from prehistoric times. The story begins about 34,000 years ago in the Horn of Africa, likely in the modern country of Ethiopia, where M35 occurred in an ancient ancestor. By 20,000-25,000 years ago, his descendants had moved north into what is now Egypt, where M78 formed. As climate conditions changed, some M78 descendants returned to the Horn of Africa, while others, including our ancestors, continued north, crossing out of Africa into the Middle East. This northern migration of M78 individuals is associated with the spread of Afroasiatic languages (from which modern languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and many others arise).

Sometime around 9,000 years ago, Neolithic people bearing the SNP M78 entered Europe from Anatolia. They had by this time adopted a farming lifestyle, and as they entered Europe, they displaced or absorbed the existing hunter-gatherer populations. Somewhere between Anatolia and the Balkans in Europe, V13 formed in an M78 descendant. Haplogroup E-V13 has been a particularly interesting topic for scientific study because (1) it is the only E-M35 lineage that exists primarily outside of Africa today, and (2) it is associated with the first wave of farmers in Europe, predating the Indo-Europeans by several millennia. V13 reaches its highest frequencies in the Balkans (particularly in the modern-day region of Kosovo), Greece, and parts of Italy. Its frequency diminishes significantly as one moves north and west from the Balkans.

Frequency of haplogroup E-V13 based on the data set of Cruciani et al (2007). (Source: “HgE1b1b1a2.png” by Hxseek. Creative Commons license CC BY 3.0.)

Just over 4,000 years ago, three SNPs in the Calhouns’ specific ancestry––BY3880, Y16729, and Y16721––occurred in rapid succession and may have been associated with the migration of V13 people out of the Balkans. BY3880 descendants live in many places throughout Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. Interestingly, Y16729 has only two known descendant lineages, one primarily in the Arabian Peninsula, and the other (Y16721) primarily in Scotland. Y16721 probably arose in continental Europe several millennia before people in that haplogroup arrived in Scotland, and it is possible that most of its descendant lineages outside of Scotland have died out or have yet to be identified. As far as I can tell, most Y-DNA testers that belong to E-Y16721 also belong to the much more recent haplogroup E-Y16733, which probably formed about 700 CE.

Although V13 is rare in the far west of Europe, it can be found in several pockets in Britain, including the historic regions of Wales, Cumbria, and Strathclyde (now part of Scotland and notably including Dunbartonshire). How did it get there? One widely held theory is that it arrived with Roman soldiers from the Balkans who were stationed in Britain starting in 150 CE. (See Steven C. Bird, “Haplogroup E3b1a2 as a possible indicator of settlement in Roman Britain by soldiers of Balkan origin”, 2007). As the chart “Phylogenetic Tree of Haplogroup E1b1b” at eupedia.com shows, V13 testers in England and Scotland belong not just to Y16721 but to several subgroups of V13 that are distantly related to each other. While the Roman-soldier theory is plausible, it implies that all of these different V13 lineages arrived in Britain at approximately the same time and all directly from the Balkans, both ideas that are difficult to prove.

Others argue that the various V13 haplotypes in Britain did not all come at the same time but rather via multiple migration events that brought V13-bearing Phoenicians, North Africans, French and Spanish Jews, and other groups to the island. (See DNA Consultants, “Right pew, wrong church”, 2012). Perhaps more relevant to the Calhoun family is the possibility that V13 also arrived with Flemish soldiers and mercenaries who came in the wake of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. (See Rick Sinnott, “Synnott history: a compendium”, 2020). Some of these Flemings were stationed in Wales, and it is possible that others were recruited to the fledgling feudal aristocracy of Scotland established by King David I (see my earlier blog post). While V13 and BY3880 have been identified in modern Flemish testers in FTDNA’s Flanders & Flemish DNA Project, subgroups Y16721 and Y16733 have not. However, the current sample size is extremely small.

Genetics of the E-Y16733 Calhouns in the Genealogical Era

The common ancestor of E-Y16733 testers lived shortly before the adoption of surnames in Scotland, and so this haplogroup and its descendants are of genealogical relevance. Of the more than 100 Y-DNA testers in the Calhoun Surname Project who belong to E-Y16733, more than 60 have taken the Big Y (comprehensive SNP) test. The accompanying tree summarizes the relationships of these 60 based on their terminal haplogroups and information about some of their earliest known paternal ancestors.

We got extremely lucky with the timing of formation of two particular SNPs in this group. The first is Y16733 itself, which includes both Calhouns and Kilpatricks, but very few others. Because it dates from roughly 700-1050 CE, shortly before the surname era, it is safe to assume that people in this group who share the same surname do so because they inherited it from a common ancestor with that name. The second is the more recent SNP BY5775, which dates from roughly 1100-1300 CE and neatly separates the Calhouns from the Kilpatricks. All E-Y16733 Calhouns who have tested so far are positive for BY5775, while all Kilpatricks are negative. This observation is consistent with the idea that the Calhoun name was first adopted by a man named Kilpatrick prior to 1300 CE. From the historical record, we know this man to have been Humphrey of Kilpatrick, who adopted the Colquhoun name around 1240 CE. <Mic drop!>

In addition to Kilpatrick, the surnames Welch/Welsh, McClelland, and a few others appear among the deep branches of the E-Y16733 tree. These may have come about from NPEs within the Kilpatrick family, or they could connect to the Kilpatricks and Calhouns prior to the surname era. At present, there is not enough data to resolve the relationships of these deep branches to each other.

All of the BY5775 testers belong to one of three subgroups, two of which (FT350465 and FT32806) include only Calhouns, while the third (BY5778) includes only members of the McCarter family. While it seems likely that the McCarter group are the biological descendants of a Calhoun (or, less likely, a Kilpatrick) ancestor, acquiring the McCarter name through an NPE that occurred sometime between 1300 and 1550, there is no way to know at present. In addition, there is not yet enough data to resolve the relationships between the three subgroups of BY5775. I will therefore focus on the two Calhoun subgroups, which split from each other between 1300 and 1350, very early in the history of the family.

E-FT350465 includes Calhoun testers of diverse backgrounds. Some are descendants of Ulster Scots from Ireland, while others are descendants of Scots who as far as we know never moved to Ireland. Several are known to have been Anglicans, while others were Presbyterians. Some were wealthy landowners while others were poorer tenants. It is clear that among the ancestors of this group were at least five Calhouns who independently moved from Scotland to Ireland in the 17^th century. Notably, this group includes the landowning Colhoun family of Crosh, County Tyrone, Ireland whose supposed pedigree was published by Charles Croslegh in 1904.

E-FT32806 likewise includes some testers with Irish (Ulster Scot) ancestry and others with Scottish ancestry. However, most if not all appear to have been Presbyterian in the 18^th century, and there are no known landowning families in their ancestry. One subgroup of FT32806, FTA41789, includes relatives of Vice President John C. Calhoun and other Calhoun families who settled in Abbeville County, South Carolina in the 1700s. At least two ancestors within this group independently moved from Scotland to Ireland in the 17th century.

Tree of haplogroups of E-Y16733 Big Y testers as of April 2023. SNPs are labeled with red dots, placed at TMRCA. Testers are described with surname and place of origin of earliest ancestor, colored in red for Calhoun surnames, blue for Kilpatrick surnames, and gray for others. Those known to have originated in Ireland labeled with green flags, and those in Scotland with the Scottish flag (blue). Green screen marks the period of Ulster settlement by Scots, ca. 1625-1700. Groups of testers who could be descended from a common settler of Ireland have the green flag column boxed in light green.

E-Y16733 and the colquhoun of luss lineage

An important question that many Calhoun testers ask is how they might be related to the Colquhouns of Colquhoun and Luss, the “senior line” of the Calhoun family in Scotland whose pedigree, worked out by William Fraser, stretches back to Humphrey of Kilpatrick in the 13^th century. Unfortunately, the answer at present is, “we don’t know.” The reason we don’t know is that we have no point of reference in the genetic tree more recent than Humphrey of Kilpatrick himself, who is the ancestor not only of the Luss line but of all other Calhouns in E-Y16733. The specific male line of the Luss family that began with Humphrey of Kilpatrick in 1240 ended in 1718 with the death of Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss, 5^th Baronet.

The only guess I would hazard to make based on the genetic data is that FT350465 probably hews more closely to the Luss lineage than FT32806. The Colquhouns of Luss were upper-class landowners in Scotland, and FT350465 includes two upper-class landowning Colhoun families from Ireland, one from Crosh, County Tyrone and the other from Taughboyne, County Donegal. Money begets money, as they say.

I and many other researchers have been working to build an evidence-based pedigree between a living Calhoun and someone from the pre-1718 Luss lineage that can serve as a “gold standard,” a frame of reference for all E-Y16733 Y-DNA testers. However, to my knowledge this has not yet been accomplished. I hope this blog will contribute to that effort in some way.

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Once again, special thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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