 This talk looks at the reconstruction of an Ulster family from Cavern using techniques of genealogical research and genetic genealogy. It was originally given at Genetic Genealogy Island at the Titanic Centre in Belfast in February 2018. It was originally broadcast live on the ISOG Facebook page but due to the poor sound quality this is a re-recording minus the jokes and the baited breath of the audience. This talk is partly in commemoration of the tricentenary of the Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish migrations to the Americas which are said to have begun in earnest from Ulster in 1718. We will look at a family from Ulster from Cavern with a surname Kemp and use a range of different techniques and evidence for family reconstruction including family memories and mapping. We will look at some of the oldest historical documents available for this part of Ireland and DNA. This project was part genealogical family research, partly localised one name study and partly a DNA surname project. Kemp is not usually thought of as an Irish surname and here we can see its distribution across the south and east of England. And it's also a common name in Scotland though it's not certain whether the English and Scottish names share a common origin. We can see in Ireland however using John Greenham's fantastic surname mapping site that the name Kemp clustered in just a few locations in Ireland, mainly Cavern but also in Limerick and Cork. And if we include the spelling, the variant spelling, C-A-N-P, Kemp, we can see it has a very strong presence in Cavern. In many of the older records I've found references to the same people using both forms of the name Kemp and Kemp so we need to treat them as the same surname in Cavern. Indeed an older member of the family once told me we usually said our name as Kemp but when we were being posh we called ourselves Kemp. So when I started this project most of these families believed that they were not related to each other in spite of sharing this rather unusual surname and being largely found in just one county. So on this map of Cavern we can see places where clusters of families with those surnames can be found. We can see one cluster in the middle there around Cavern Town, another around Arfa in Kilishandra Parish and another in the north-east of the county up at Ashfield or Kildom Sherdon Parish. There are still some people named Kemp living in the county today though there were many more living there in the 1800s. But the oldest records of this surname in Cavern relate to the Parish of Kilmore there with a suck around it. And here was found the Protestant Cathedral and also many lands of the Tharnam estate. And for example here is a page from the Parish registers of Kilmore in fact it's the first page of the register dating from 1702. In the marriages column we can see a John Gray marrying Jane Kemp. And a few years later we will see Jane's sister Sarah also marrying in the Parish. Unfortunately there are no parental names given but we can guess Jane and Sarah were probably born in the 1680s. And their father who passed the surname onto them may have been born around 1640 or 1650. This is the oldest record of the surname Kemp in the county. And so their father is a good candidate to have been the most distant common ancestor of all the Kemp's in the county of Cavern. So these Kemp's may have lived on the Tharnam estate and estate records can be excellent early sources to learn about the lives and family relationships of farming people. This is an estate rental from the Gosford estate which covered the parish of Kilishandra. And this document is held at Proney the public records office of Northern Ireland here in Belfast. And here we can see a tenant's name James Kemp. And in November 1816 he's in arrears of £41, 11 shillings and fourpence hapeny. Quite a lot of money. 1816 is often known as the year without a summer. And we can see on this rental that all the farmers are in arrears after what must have been a terrible summer and harvest for them. We can also see notes made by the land agent commenting on the tenants. This is his comment on James Kemp saying unpaid still is one of the most industrious men with three sons equal to himself on the estate. But unfortunate in repeated deaths of his cattle last winter was not left one. But through indulgence of time that he's getting has no fear of overcoming it still. So through documents like this we can hear real information, voices, comments about ancestral people from even 200 years back in the past. Things improved for James as we can see from this beautiful leather-bound terrier or land survey of the Gosford estate from 1837. Also kept here at Proney. James being at the top of the list of tenants on this survey. And there are also these beautiful hand-coloured maps of James's tanland of Corridonum showing who was farming on which plots of land. Going in closer detail to the top corner there we can see James Kemp's land. Show them the surname Kemp here in this case. And we can also see two of his sons George and another James farming land was probably subdivided out of James's original holding. The third son we know was farming in another part of the parish. Because of the loss of the census in Ireland maps and surveys are a very important source for the history of early 19th century Ireland. If you want to put together this kind of surname project then the primary valuation, usually known as the Griffiths survey, is the best place to start. Now this was taken in 1857 in Cavern. And here we can see an example from the printed survey for the townland of Tiruchin which is near Cavern town. We can see here there are two tenants named Edward Kemp and William Kemp. And this survey can tell us a lot about the social structure of Ireland at this time. We can see that the two Kemp's are leasing land directly from Farnam, from the estate. And then they are subletting houses and small plots of land to certain other subtenants who are renting from the Kemp's, not directly from the estate. The two Kemp's hold about 50 acres each, a fairly decent holding for that time. In fact they are the wealthiest people with this surname in the county. And their closeness to the Farnam estate suggests they may be representatives of the oldest line of descent of the family in Cavern. Unfortunately we have not been able so far to find any living descendants of this particular family though we are still looking. And plotted on this map we can see all the heads of household from Griffiths named Kemp or Kemp for the various clusters around Cavern town there in the middle and Kilishandra down in the left and Ashfield up there in the top right. And once we know where families are located from Griffiths we can begin to research these lines back until we identify the most distant known ancestors or the MDKAs for these family lines. Cavern is fortunate in that fragments of the old censuses from 1821 and 1841 still survive. So this map of the most distant known ancestors draws on them as well as from parish records and old voters' roles. And here is an extract from the 1841 census which survives for almost the whole parish of Kilishandra. We can see that it offers much more extensive information in the Scottish and English 1841 censuses showing things like marital status, family relationships and dates of marriage that you don't see in the British equivalent. And even here the names of people who had died in the previous ten years. Without doubt the loss of the 1841 census in the four courts fire of 1922 is probably the biggest loss to Irish history of everything from that disaster. And here we have an entry from the 1821 census from a different Cavern parish, the parish of Castle Terror near to Cavern town. And again there is much fuller information given than the British census of the same year which is only a heads of household list. Here we can see the family of John and Margaret Kemp with their children and a grandson as well as their ages. With these surviving census fragments it's possible to reconstruct families back to an earlier date than is possible in most other parts of Ireland. And this is a very interesting family that we'll spend a bit more time with in this talk. This charming photograph dating from probably the 1850s is believed to show a John Kemp with his wife Mary Hazlewood. It's not the John Kemp from the previous slide but this may well be the son of that John Kemp, born in about 1790 and who migrated to Upper Canada in 1821 the same year as that census. And this building was formerly known as Kemp's Tavern, built by another John Kemp and never viewed the one there and left and which replaced an earlier log cabin Tavern built by his father Will Kemp, who was John's brother. Today this building is now known as Cabottos and is an Italian restaurant near Ottawa. There's an interesting story about how these brothers came to Upper Canada and also how John from Cavern and Mary from Wexford came to meet each other and be married. This is a record of their marriage license for John and Mary obtained in the Diocese of Ossary, which is based around Kilkenny Cathedral, very far from Cavern, though closer to Mary's homeland in Wexford. This marriage taking place in 1813. So part of the answer can be found by studying the movements of the county militias around Ireland in this period. So here we see the militia quarterly paylists and muster rolls, which are held in a very full collection at the UK National Archives at Q in London. Using these we can track the movements of the Cavern militia around Ireland. In this one for example, we can see they were stationed at Wexford in 1812-13, the year of John and Mary's marriage. So during the Napoleonic Wars, when the regular British army was overseas fighting in the peninsula wars and in America, the county militias were used across Ireland to maintain control in its place. The militia muster rolls held at Q are so comprehensive that we can reconstruct the movements of the militia troops and the members of those troops across this whole period. So the Cavern militia was normally established at Cavern. And we can track its movements all around the Irish Midlands, including a stay in Kilkenny where John Kemp and Mary Hazlewood registered their marriage. So the first move was to County Wexford in 1803. And then the Cavern militia zigzags across the Midlands for the next three years. Followed by a period moving between Athlone and Kilkenny from 1806 to 1810. Then moving up to Dublin before returning to Wexford by 1813. And then finally back to Cavern as the war ended in Europe in 1814. So here is the muster roll taken at Wexford in 1813. And we can see there are three men, so named Kemp or actually here Kemp. There's John and Will and there's also a Robert Kemp. And we can also track when these three men were first recorded with the militia and where the company was at the time of their enlistment. John we can see first appears in Kilkenny in 1810 while Will makes his first appearance in 1812 at Wexford. Robert appeared to be older, being with the company right from the beginning of their manoeuvres. And by 1815 back at the home base Will Kemp is now the only one of the three still surviving in the militia. It's not clear who Robert is in relation to the two brothers and an older Robert does appear in the 1821 census, that's probably him. And it's possible he could have been the brother's uncle or even father, but it's not possible to tell this from the surviving records. So we know that these two brothers and Mary were in Canada by the early 1820s. And we can study the early colonisation of Upper Canada, now Ontario, via these fantastic maps which are also held at the National Archives in Kew. In 1817 assisted migration was subsidised by the UK government and was building a line of settlement like a front against those dangerous republican radicals to the south. Drawing on good, trusted, Protestant settlers, many paid to migrate to Canada, especially former soldiers demobbed from the wars. We can see the rapid spread of the new townships being written in by hand at the top of the map. And here still in 1817 already new townships have been created and mapped to the north, including Goulbourne, to where the Kempts will head and later Kempts Tavern will be built. And here we have a larger sense of how this front of settlement was spreading, not just against those dangerous American radicals, but also against the terrifying vast open lands to the north, far vaster than anything these Irish, Scottish or English settlers would have been used to. With their immense forests and further north their great tracts of wilderness and further still where there be engines. Assisted passage had been available to emigrants in 1817, and many letters were written then and after to government petitioning for assistance to emigrate, which survived a day in volumes of correspondence kept to the National Archives in Kew, including this one from 1821, showing the names of a group wishing to migrate from Cavern. And this group has been written about by the Canadian historian Bruce Elliott in his book Irish Migrants in the Canada's. So this petition then was written by George Argyu of Cavern on behalf of a group of families living around Cavern Town in that earlier mentioned parish of Castle Terror. And addressed to the Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of State for the colonies, and it shows they already had friends in the Upper Canada colonies whom they could join and would help them to settle in. Maybe that was Will Camp there already or other family members. And there's almost a certain ring of presumption in this letter. It's almost saying, OK, OK, your Lordship, we're all ready to go, just tell us when. Oh, don't forget to send the money. And here we see a full list of all the petitioners and the families who were planning to migrate. That's highlighting John Camp there, given here with a family of ten. Now, this is certainly more than he and Mary had already had in the approximately seven or eight years of their marriage. But this could actually include his parents' family, the one we saw in the earlier census page, or other other other relatives who he was hoping to take along with him. And did these petitioners receive what they wanted? Well, we can see here the Lord Bathurst's reply. Or at least his instruction to his minions. Give them the usual answer. And maybe this was a 19th-century equivalent of, don't call us, we'll call you. However, by the mid-1820s, almost all of these family groups can be found in Upper Canada. Having made the journey by themselves with or more likely without the assistance of government. So to turn then to using DNA as evidence for family reconstruction and genealogical research. Having looked at the historical records available in this part of Ireland, that would be the first stage of research building up a historical background. Having done that, we'd also need to decide on our testing strategy. And in this case, since the most distant known ancestors, or MDKAs, were living in the mid-18th century, this leads us to need to use Y chromosome DNA. Since Y DNA passes down the paternal line in a similar way to surnames. Ordozonal tests, like the family finder or the ancestry test, cannot reach back reliably to that time depth. While Y DNA, on the other hand, can track a single ancestral line, potentially back to the beginning of surname use. And there's a very quick reminder here of the two most common types of marker using Y chromosome research, the STRs and the SNPs. So a reminder here then of the map of the MDKAs which I'd found in earlier research. The blue ones here indicate those for whom we have a descendant in the DNA study. The gold ones are all the other households from the mid-19th century whom we either didn't test because we knew they were related to one to a testing or were yet to track living descendants for. Particularly there in the centre, you can see the two Kemp's in Turukin who are probably the biggest omissions from this project. And then we have two further steps. The third step then, we must draw up those verified lines of descent from the MDKA to find the living testers who will represent those lines. So the blue markers then on the map show those lines with living testers that we tracked down by researching forward from the MDKA. Once you have found your testers, you need to approach them, to interest them and involve them in your project. And hope if they are interested enough that they will join in. You should give them full and complete information about how you will use their DNA and what limits you put around that use to protect their privacy and interests. Obtain informed consent. And if you have approached them to test, then of course you should pay for those tests. So here then on this chart we can see all the lines that were researched for the Kemp project. Again it's a very rough timeline down the left, very rough, showing the MDKAs near the top, down to the modern day testers at the bottom. So the red lines are showing the lines which were tested. While the blue boxes have no descendants in the study. The dotted lines are showing speculative links or possible connections where the paper evidence is weak or no longer exists. And it's hoped that some of these hypotheses could be tested or strengthened using DNA evidence. Here we see that Turuk and family, the one we saw in Griffiths earlier and possibly the oldest and wealthiest family with this surname. That's on the left there and at the very top we can see Jane who we saw marrying in Kilmore in 1702. I haven't joined them but I think they're quite likely to be connected to each other. And these seem to be the oldest established surname bearers in the county but we're still unfortunately not yet able to find direct living descendants that we can join in the study. And finally then at the bottom we see the received testers all anonymized along with the other living people in the diagram. And now we can see what the DNA testing programme has suggested for the relatedness across this chart. So all the lines turned out to be part of one genetic family which shares a common ancestor in the direct paternal line. There's a little bit of reorganization there in the centre as you can see and we've managed to cluster some of these branches together seeing where some may be more closely related to others. However this cannot tell us when that most recent common ancestor or MRCA actually lived. It cannot show us if he was the father of the Jane Kemp living in Ireland in the late 17th century or if the most recent common ancestor was actually someone who lived much earlier and or elsewhere. The red dotted lines then show the strong relationships which we've managed to detect in the test and the blue lines and arrows show weaker relationships but still having clear evidence in the tests of those lines converging on that shared common ancestor. The tests seem to indicate three groups of this extended family. The Canadian family of John and Will Kemp are on the right and my own maternal ancestors are in the group on the very left. Then in the right middle we can see the Kemp's of Kilishandra that we saw earlier in those estates documents. Another way to view the resulting tree is by plotting it on the map here showing one possible migration route that may have occurred across Cavern for the descendants from the MRCA looking very likely that the Kemp's in Kilishandra split and broke away from those closer to Cavern Town or the Tharnam estate to set up their farms in the southern part of the county. So there seem to be lots of answers but genetic testing has a habit of just when you think you've solved all your problems throwing up new ones. Here we can see the matches of one of the Kemp testers and see how there are several Kemp matches but also a number of matches with other surnames. Before the testing was done there was no notion of any relationships with anybody carrying these surnames. So are these all close relatives then who share the same MRCA or have there been some surname switches at some time in the past if so which was the original surname? Or are these other surname bearers actually more distantly related from a time before the Kemp MRCA? So the recent growth of SNP tests like the Big Y have helped to answer these questions. With SNP marker data we can build mutation history trees using the SNPs to sort the STR matches adding in signature STR markers and genealogical knowledge. This mutation history tree for the Kemp's of Cavern brings in the information from my earlier diagram eliminates all the other surnames and we can see now how the tree flows downwards from the earliest common ancestor who will have been a Kemp. We don't know the name of that earliest common ancestor so on this tree he's represented by that green block at the top showing four SNP markers that all of the Kemp's share. There are actually one more SNP marker in green which is unique to one branch of Kemp and there's quite a few STR markers in purple which seem to mark particular branches of this family. Then by doing the same kind of sorting for the other surnames we can produce a broader mutation history tree for those Jacob's and Cummings showing how they relate to each other and to the Kemp's. So we can estimate that there was a common ancestor for the Kemp's and the Jacob's living probably in the 1300's or 1400's or maybe in the 1500's and then a much older common ancestor for both of these with the Cummings possibly back as far as 750 to 1000 CE. Roughly around the time of the Viking raids across Europe though of course that's a complete coincidence. But SNP testing also brings further new complications an unexpected result as a descendant of a James Kemp ton from County Tyrone also matches closely with the Kavan Kemp's. This throws up all kinds of new questions about the origins of the surname and the origins of all of this group within Ulster. Then in 2017 came some new matches to the Kemp testers and with interesting places of origin. So here on the map we see the homeland of the Kavan Kemp's down at the bottom left there and here are the Ulster Kemp tons in Lyssen which is on the border between Counties Tyrone and Derry and over here with another old Kemp ton family from Berwick upon Tweed that town that famously kept passing between English and Scottish control. And not far away from that we have farmers called Walker from the Scottish border County of Roxburyshire who also match to this group. And on top of this there's further evidence that shows that the Berwick Kemp tons had connections with the London merchant companies these very same companies also closely involved in the plantation of Derry which of course was why the London was put into London Derry. So recent snip testing through the big Y test of all these new matches is just beginning to build a model of how all these groups may relate to each other. It's work in progress so still very much a tentative picture and still we can produce a rudimentary diagram that is intended to just suggest new directions for research. The YP numbers here are snips that have been discovered. Those at the top are shared by all below and those further down are shared by just some of the group lower than the snips in the tree. So the findings so far are suggesting that the walkers of the borders split off first at the earliest branching and then perhaps more or less around the same time the Berwick Kemp tons, the Jacobs of Maryland and a third group in the middle split from each other. And that third group in the middle seems to be the one that went to Ulster splitting in turn to become the two groups of Kempton and Kemp in Kavan and Mid Ulster. So this then creates new questions and sets up a next phase of the project which is to go right back to the beginning and start to do the same all over for the Kemptons and the Kemptons because they do that too in Tyrone as well as the Kemptons or the Northern Borderlands as we've done already for the Kavan Kemp's. So many thanks as ever to all my collaborators in this project and the many willing people who've contributed by sharing their DNA and their genealogical knowledge about these families and their histories. And thanks also to Morris Gleason and his team as the organisers of the genetic genealogy island here in Belfast which has ever has been a great pleasure to take part in. Thank you very much for listening.