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:

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 (maybe) 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 now have ten 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 another distinct Coffey group, now with 12 members, that we’re calling the “Munster Group”, because 5 of their members claim ancestral origins in Kerry and Cork, which were originally part of a region called “Munster”. (This area offers a complication, because we also have UNMATCHED individuals who claim immigration from Cork, but who do not match each other or this group. I suspect the Cork area Coffey families have developed a degree of “genetic diversity” similar to what we know happened to groups within America?)

THESE two “Coffey Clans” may fit into ancient Coffey homelands, but this is NOT very satisfying to the largest group of members of our DNA Project. 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 “Coffey” 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”?

That said, we do have a VERY promising theory about our Irish origins. We now believe that “Coffey/Coffee/Keogh/Kehoe/Kaho” were once a single family. And one of the Kehoe Clans claim THEIR genetic homeland is County Wexford. And, per the map above, Dr. Bowes believes that the nearby County Tipperary is a Genetic homeland for a Coffey Clan. So perhaps we should look hard at the area from Tipperary to Wexford for our homeland?

The analysis leading to this conclusion is lengthy and somewhat complicated. For more discussion, have a look at:

http://www.coffey.ws/FamilyTree/DNA/CoffeyOrigins-Edward&Peter.htm

There’s another geographic area of tentative interest: 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. 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!

There’s another “Down” straw to grasp: The Edward Group has one 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.”

The above web page link also discusses the Edward/Peter connection to “Wilson”. The Wilson link is likely much more recent than the Kehoe connection. I don’t see the “Down” connection as very promising, but would like to see some DNA testing on current “Coffey” residents of Down.

Of course, what I would really like to see is a significant number of DNA tests on actual Irish “Coffey” presently living in several of the various Irish counties. And we are making progress. As of this writing (June 2013) we have received “intent to test” promises from Irish men with roots in Galway, Down, and Tipperary.

Stand by for future developments!