Welcome to the Clan MacFarlane Worldwide, Inc. Genealogy Team
We want to make sure that everyone who is interested in furthering knowledge of their Scottish heritage gets the help they need. There are four members of this committee, and we all bring different strengths to the table. This page is to introduce ourselves and provide links for you to access.
Mary Helen Haines: Chairperson for Genealogy at CMW, and co-administrator for the MacFarlane Project with FamilyTreeDNA.
When you complete your genealogy sheet, please scan it and send to me at
CMW, care/of Mary Helen Haines
6610 Garlinghouse Ln.
Dallas, Texas, 75252
I will copy it, send it on to Andrew Macfarlane (below) and he will enter it into his database of all our family trees, if you wish. We will consult, and inform you of any connections to other members that you may not know about.
The Chevalier Terrance Gach MacFarlane (below) will also receive a copy, and with his deep knowledge of Scottish lines, provide further help, especially with the MacFarlane DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA.com.
Peter E. McFarland will assist with research and making connections for our American lines.
We are all long-time members of CMW, as well as co-administrators of the MacFarlane DNA project at FamilyTreeDNA.
Brief Personal Histories of our involvement in MacFarlane research:
Mary Helen Haines:
I have been working on McFarland genealogy since 2000, and am still learning, so I welcome any additional information you can share with me. I taught World History, European History, and Art History in a public high school for 28 years and then part-time for 8 more years at the University of Texas at Dallas.
My love of history was probably inherited from my father Joe McFarland Hill, and his mother, Lola McFarland Hill. She so loved her McFarland background that she wrote and published a family history in 1966, which became the “bible” for our McFarland relations.
Since 2000 I have been researching my family lines, in particular, the McFarland line. During those early years, I had the pleasure of working with Elizabeth Macfarlane, adding my line to her data base, and submitting two cousins to the DNA project, which allowed me to “meet” more relatives, and some of those in person at the 2009 Gathering in Scotland and our 2014 trip as well. I have published several manuscripts concerning my McFarland line, and in teasing out the various Johns and Roberts, I have come in contact with quite a few of the American branches. My family tree is at Rootsweb and Ancestry and my earliest documented McFarland ancestor is Robert McFarland (ca. 1680-1751). He is located here at Rootsweb and Ancestry.
Andrew Macfarlane:
As mentioned above I am a co-administrator of the FTDNA MacFarlane surname study and serve on the CMW genealogy committee as well as running my own database generated web-site on MacFarlane genealogy at www.clanmacfarlanegenealogy.info
The information on Macfarlane family lines comes from all over the world but I receive much help with USA based Macfarlanes from Mary Helen, and clan chiefs and the cadet houses from Chevalier Terrance Gach MacFarlane.
I started out in genealogy some 30 years ago trying to prove the supposed clan connection of my line (which had already been well researched by my mother) to that of the MacFarlane chiefs. I very quickly found that Terrance in the USA was the world’s main researcher on the chiefs and their cadet houses. He became my mentor as I worked my way through the existing lineages. I then decided I should research all Macfarlane families with the idea of being able to track all Macfarlane families back to their Scottish, and clan roots.
I have traveled with the people involved with setting up CMWI, on the 2006 and 2009 tours to Scotland, enjoyed their company and look forward to joining them again for the next visit to Scotland.
I also belong to the Clan MacFarlane Australia Inc. a robust little society looking after MacFarlanes in Australia, and now New Zealand.
Chevalier Terrance Gach MacFarlane:
I have been researching MacFarlane genealogy since 1968 when my grandfather turned over his genealogy collection, built up over his lifetime, to me. As he was a first cousin once removed to James Macfarlane, the author of the History of Clan MacFarlane (1922), it was quite an extensive trove of material. Over the decades, while researching our chiefs, I have greatly expanded my grandfather’s collection to include such items as James Macfarlane’s notes and drafts for the (unpublished) second volume of his History (tracing the MacFarlane cadet houses).
From 1980 to 1990 I served as the Vice President of Genealogy for the Clan MacFarlane Society during which time I focused on finding the heir to our chiefs. Following that, I began work on three manuscripts: The Scots Nobility, The House of Lennox, and The Barons of Arrochar and Their Cadets, while continuing to research our chiefs in conjunction with Elizabeth Macfarlane, my successor (1991 to 2009) as genealogist at the Clan MacFarlane Society.
Currently, most of my free time is spent on the day-to-day administration of the largest MacFarlane DNA project in the world hosted by FamilyTreeDNA.com (FTDNA) which is the oldest and largest commercial genetic genealogy lab in the world. Andrew Macfarlane and Mary Helen Haines serve as co-administrators of the project along with several others.
FTDNA has the world’s largest yDNA (direct male line ancestry) and mtDNA (direct female line ancestry) database and tests more yDNA markers and mtDNA makers than any other lab in the world. They also test autosomal block DNA (the DNA found between the other two). If you have reached the end of the paper trail for any particular ancestor you should try genetic genealogy. Come visit us at:
http://www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=MacFarlane
I am learning something new every day, which feeds my inborn thirst for knowledge. I take much pleasure in sharing my findings and look forward to learning from the esteemed MacFarlane family historians, genealogists, and genetic DNA professionals.
Peter E. McFarland
I am a self-taught researcher who found it hard to slow down and remain calm when I first started working library genealogy sections. I love to help folks climb over/break through those genealogy brick walls that pepper everyone’s trees, early deaths, and lack of documentation so common with America’s pioneers, and farmers. Professionally I have worked in computer industry for 45 years, mostly recently in MPP Datawarehouse, and Business Intelligence fields, so analyzing data is somewhat of a passion and hobby.
My adventure in genealogy began in 1989 when my father brought home the family artifacts. Some from my great grandparents' move to Colorado in a covered wagon, the year was 1880. Other items passed down over the years, some hundred-year-old Tin types, an 1870 bible, and yellowed family documents. But the weighty brown sun bonnet, and small thin black broadcloth jacket made a very personal connection with me. The bonnet worn by my GGM crossing the prairie from Stoddard, MO into the mountains of Colorado, and that coat; The same one my GGF wore in his portrait, a massive ornate framed thing leaning against the living room wall. Holding my grandparents’ clothing, looking at their photos blackened with time, I felt transported back in time, sharing in a small way their 1800’s world. I was hooked, and consumed from that day with understanding our ancestors especially after my father basically stated he knew little to nothing about our ancestors, and all his elders had passed away. My studies, and tools moving from family bibles, and handwritten notes to local, and distant libraries' musty books, microfilm, and backwoods cemeteries, and boxes of paper to FamilyTreeMaker, Ancestry, FTDNA, and DNA. My yDNA results showed a McFarland, not of the Chief's DNA line, but rather part of the second largest McFarland lineage, the one that connects with the other Scots clusters from which Clan Gregor and Clan Buchanan chiefs emerged.
I subsequently became a co-admin on FTDNA MacFarlane DNA project. The projects last twenty years’ efforts added dramatically to CMW, and FTDNA membership highlighting immigration from Scotland, and Northern Ireland to America across its history, and just as important connecting many McFarland lineages into a comprehensive tree.