TWIGS TO TREES #47 JUNE 2022
Twigs to Trees
June, 2022
Mary Helen Haines
Good day CMW members. Thank goodness we have middle-names today to help distinguish ourselves. It has always been difficult teasing out the various Roberts, Johns, and Williams in our MacFarlane lines. That is where DNA has helped to separate fact from fiction in our various genetic lineages. When I received our newest member’s genealogy form, with ancestors named King and Armour, I was thrilled because those are rather rare MacFarlane names. I went to our database to find other members with those unusual names. That led me to Ohio McFarlands, and like pulling a thread, I was soon digging into all the early Mcfarland settlers in Ohio. Part One will appear in an article following this short column.
Back to the Armour McFarland line: Armour McFarland was born abt. 1747 in County Tyrone, Ireland. Although I have not seen any written records as proof, family tradition has it that his father was John McFarland, and his mother named Mary Ann Armour. There are families with the Armour surname all over Ireland in records from Cork, Antrim, and Donegal counties. The name originally derived from the occupation of an armorer, combining Middle English and Old French. In the 1830s several of Armour McFarland’s adult children decided to immigrate. It appears that at least three went to Canada and one went to the U.S. While the King name was passed down often in the Canadian descendants, it does not appear in the Ohio descendants of Patrick McFarland Sr. (1773-1841) who arrived with his family in 1831, and soon purchased a land grant in Coshocton county. There are a slew of Armour McFarlands (in various spellings) in Canada, the U.S. and Northern Ireland. So far, we do not have a Y-DNA tester from this line. I hope that will change; it would be great to unite the families on both sides of the Atlantic.