McGing Family Genealogy

Thanks for stopping by! I figure 99% of the people stopping by will be bored silly, because this really is a trivial page but.....

Using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine I find a version of this web site in June of 2000. I'm pretty sure it existed in 1999 but can't find the records. Wow. It was McGing.com then, since changed to mcging.org. I'm on some of the socials, not on others as I get older and no longer have a general web page. This particular site is neat because I bought the McGing.org domain name and this page is being set up to be a McGing surname google search magnet (and maybe a few other things.) I’ve been doing my family history since 1985 and this web page first went up in the late 1990s. (You should see what it looked like - take a peek, it ain't pretty) So while some of the questions I asked have been fully or partially answered, I’ve kept this page largely untouched because it reminds me of just how much work and time has been spent on this.

Plus it helps answer a ton of questions and lets people search and find out stuff, freeing me from a lot of emails. Did you notice the search bar up there? You can search this site.

Anyway, I'm told I ramble. In 1985, I was thinking that anyone with a name as rare as McGing would find that most of the McGing’s he runs into are related in some way. But until recently, I’d have been wrong. Until recently, all the ones who track me down are not related (based on making your typical family tree and linking up with records.) So many families, yet so many saying “Nope, not a relation.” Go figure! So what started out as a effort to document my family turned into an effort to document the McGings of the world with a view to proving or disproving that we are indeed actual cousins. And what has changed since 1985 is DNA testing. Which supports the hypothesis of all being related even when the records don’t exist to make the link.

So this is a McGing magnet page. If you are a McGing, or used to be one or have a relation who was or is one, drop me a line or send me an email and we'll see if we can find out just where we all come from. If you are a McGinn and have Mayo roots, you are likely a McGing as well. The current theory is McGinn's from some yet undetermined northern county in Ireland migrated to Mayo in the late 1700s and for some reason the name changed from McGinn to McGing. But only in Mayo and many folks who left Mayo reverted to McGinn in UK and US and Australia. If I get any responses, I can publish whatever people contribute and share various tidbits.

I've tested myself, a sister, a brother, my father, two of my mom's sisters and one of her brothers. Some or all of us are on Ancestry.com, FTDNA, MyHeritage and Living DNA. We are all on Gedmatch.

• John McGing (me) DK7908780
• John NMI McGing (Dad) HM4261828
• Maureen McGing (Sister) BP1891721
• Kevin McGing (Brother) BL6782349
• Nora Collins (Maternal Aunt) RM5387463
• Mary Collins (Maternal Aunt) DA7252097
• Michael Collins (Maternal Uncle) BX6085011

I just want to say something up front about this family tree. First, it's mixed with my wife and I'm good with that. Lots of hard work on both families. But if that is an issue, I just want you to know up front.

But the big thing is that after almost 40 years of doing this, I am using DNA to help me make the leap that lousy County Mayo records keep me from doing. I am taking the many unconnected McGing and family lines where I have dna evidence that a link does exist and bridging the gaps when I think I have substantial evidence to do so. I feel funny making people up, but these hypothetical people likely existed, we just have no records of them. But they carried familial dna that is found today and links to people who we have documented, so we know they are "family". We just cannot document it. So I've created hypothetical people as parents or siblings to not prove anything, because that will never happen, but to put up a framework that is reasonable, documented and is supported by dna to put these orphan lines into the bigger tree. So many of the McGings and spouses that are pre-1820 (but by no means not all) are constructs. They are names and dates applied to the family tree puzzle to fill in the gap the records leave but that the dna says must have existed. Was the 5th gr grandfather named Myles or Mathias? Likely not But they existed, regardless of name and the dna evidence says it looked something like my tree, even if I have the names "wrong". I have the essential familial connections right, if not exact.

I bring this up because I've gotten some flack for it, and so I'm making it a point to point it out. Also, folks tend to "steal" trees and I've seen a few where people took my data and copied it over but without my notes and such. So I'm trying to set things straight. From 1820 and later, I've scoured the records that exist. Pre-1820, I've used the few that exist and own up to the fact I have created hypotheticals to fill in gaps and connect them. Can't say I am hiding that fact.

September 5, 2024 - Still a lot of theory but its progress

So I've continued to clean things up, identify lines of inquiry with dna matches taht I've never explored and make some educated guesses. The latest was adding a Lydon grouping that had multiple dna matches, including a few that matched both my dad and my mom. I realize that because the records for Mayo don't exist for the timeframes I'm working with, the placement of a family into my big tree is a guess. Is this person a child of this family group or is he/she a first cousin, a child of the sibling of the mom/dad of the family group? The dna won't usualy give you that precision, and with no records, I'm left with just a guess. So these folks are cousins, but maybe slightly different ones based on factors we'll never know.

July 21, 2024 - Been busy

No breakthrough or such, still slogging on making tree better documented and trying to use dna to figure out brick walls. I'm considering using the Banyan tool to test whether my theory tree can be tweaked to be a bit more factual by better dna analysis. For teh cost, that's a winter project when I have less distractions.

But more importantly, we have a McGing in the 2024 Paris Olympics! Yes, Ciara McGing, indeed a distant cousin of mine whom I've never met, will represent Ireland in August 2024. I am beyond tickled that she's done this and to see the surname shared world-wide is amazing as well. I'm writing this before she competes and of course want her to be a medal winner but know that just being there is a life accomplishment. Winning would be extra. Regardless of outcome, we are very proud of her.

February 13, 2024 - Happy New Year

It's been a bit for me updating this but the tree and the reasearch were ongoing anyway. Big things done is that I've figured out the way my mom and dad are related, and have found even more examples of endogamy than I would have thought. I've found dna realtions who are related to me 4 or 5 different ways, and on my dad's side and on my mom's side. Tourmakeady folks married their neighbors!

I found out one of my uncle's by marriage was also my 4th cousin. I've used dna to make connections with what were unconncted groups of people who ended up being connected to each other. My tree on Ancestry is getting bigger. I helped my wife's half sister's half-brother figure out who his mom was. I've never stopped researching or fixing mistakes, I've unlinked some folks from the tree and now have a lot of folks in my tree who are no longer connected but no one throws away good research, some other families may find what I did of value.

My Uncle Mike passed, but not before we got some good results on my Collins side by finding some close Y-DNA matches for him, which is a big deal as my Collins side is a bit of a dead end. Some McGing "cousins" (one in Australia, one now in Canada) did Ancestry dna and it's interesting to see who we share in common (individually and as all 3). Some good research hints in that vat of data. I'm trying to help a family friend's husband figure out his bio dad. And there is so much to do and not enough time to do it.

So the tree I keep here is up to date and being updated and corrected on an onlgoing basis. Don't let the lack of updates here fool you, but I will post about big cjhanges or findings.

May 27, 2023 - Yet More Branches (Tentatively)Linked into Master Tree

It's been a bit but I've been making (reversible) changes to the master tree as I look for the ways that my mom's people and my dad's poeple are linked. Mom and dad are 3rd or 4th cousins, as were my dad's parents. Not surprised, Mayo in that time was a marry a neighbor kind of place. But as I work up the trees of people who are matches but kind of dead end, with lack of paperwork or knowledge, I've been playing "what if" by linking previously unlinked persons with the same surnames into family groups because someone in that outsider line is a dna cousin and should be in an insider family line. But which one? Hard to say as the endogamy of the area makes it hard to figure out paternal and maternal dna matches. But I've been focusing on those folks in my parents lines and my tree right now has a lot of theory in it, as oppossed to documented fact. But here's the deal, it's all concentrated on people born before 1825 when the Mayo records simply don't exist for the most part. So if you play with my tree, you will see warnings regarding some linkages further back being a theory. Just saying up front this is how it is. And if/when I get better data, I'll adjust as needed.

March 6, 2023 - More Branches Linked into Master Tree

The point of having a tree, of doing DNA testing, is to hopefully find others doing their family trees who have a pretty solid background and finding their family story helps you grow your family tree. And that happy coincidence just happened to me. A family with dna testing and a pretty solid tree claims a McGing 3x grand mother. And I don't have this line so I look. And at first, I make a linkage tying a bunch of small branches together that support the linkage to me but via my maternal side. But not via McGing. And these folks have dna connections to common cousins that the tree isn't supoprting. I'm missing something. So more research, more analysis and I think I find the path back to the McGing ancestor. So I try that and wow, all of a sudden, those common cousins actually work by dna and records, and the fact these folks are related to both my mom and dad actually works out with various other dna connections. I think that this is a good solid step to documenting my Mayo family.

March 5, 2023 - Big Y DNA Haplogroup Change

FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) had put me and this other testee into our own Y dna haplogroup. But now he is alone in that group because my brother and I now have our own unique haplogroup. It's R-FT80808. Yeah, it's genetics nerd stuff but any future folks who match are going to be relatively "close" relations. The fact is this other guy and I share a common ancestor 500 years ago, so it's not useless information.

December 1, 2022 - Big Y DNA Matches - ​Confirmed Haplogroup is R-FGC52727

FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) has put me and this other testee into our own Y dna haplogroup. Before we were in a higher order haplogroup with a number of other people, but based on how much we match each other and don't match the others, a new haplogroup was the result. Yeah, it's genetics nerd stuff but any future folks who match are going to be relatively "close" relations.

November 22, 2022 - Big Y DNA Matches

FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) is one of the few companies doing Y DNA testing. Y DNA is passed on father to son and changes slowly. There are a series of tests, differentiated on how may markers they test for. The Big Y test looks at 700 markers and identifies new haplogroups (names of unique dna sequences that are shared by people.)

Anyway, I just got an email from someone who is not named McGing or McGinn but is from County Tyrone in Ulster, and who has deep roots there. He tested at FTDNA and did a Big Y and we match very closely. Closest match ever with this test. The other folks with matches also had roots in Ulster but right now, Tyrone is looking like a place I should look into. If this man and I share a common male ancestor, and we do, and I know nothing pre-1800 for my McGings and he knows his Tyrone folks were there, there is a linkage. Maybe the story about coming to Mayo from "the North" is true. Now I have a place to focus on. Big win!

September 21, 2022 - Collins Genealogy

With my Uncle MIke doing Y DNA on FTDNA I'm slowly getting some data on my Collins side people. I created a new page for that effort, it's lovated here Collins Genealogy. It's a start of a longer work in progress.

August 27, 2022 - Still plugging away

The tree here gets updated weekly or so but the big records work is on Ancestry or in my desktop database. Likely split between the two. The tree here is an extract of my desktop database. I have seen some reports of the web page being unavailable, and have experienced it being unavailable via my desktop but I can get there with my phone, don't know why but have opened a trouble ticket with the hosting company. I've been just seeing incremental upgrades in data, McGing side is good but I do admit my understanding of living McGings in Ireland and England is just based on what the open internet provides. I've had no breakthroughs regarding Y DNA and McGing but am looking at my Collins side with new Y DNA testing. In short, barring someone new DNA testing (with Ancestry please, 23andme and MyHeritage just don't have the depth needed for genealogy) all I can do is refine my existing work. I do often change things as new data comes up, it's not written in stone. But it is also true that I can often put new testees into my tree in ways they had no idea about.

My brick wall/white whale is figuring out how my mom and dad are related to each other. I have a LOT of DNA "cousins" who I can map on the tree to either my mom or my dad's family but who are also related to my other parent! In a way I cannot figure out. Very frustrating.

February 22, 2022 - Family are cousins

Have a new page Common Ancestors that is using a new Gedmatch Tier 1 tool to look for MCRA. But in this case, it's looking for the family that both my mom's people and my dads people share as a common ancestor. Mom and dad are 3rdish cousins, but I've been unable to bredak that wall, b ut maybe now I have a plan. The tool projects the pathways and the families to look at who all share a common ancestor. Using that tool and my dad and my mom's 2 sister's dna, I've been able to confirm the couisinship and identify other families who are connected via the same family. If I can research, speak with or build trees for these families, one may give me the family names I need. Check it out.

February 15, 2022 - Kind of a big change

I'm working on Ancestry looking at people who match distantly with small trees. Lots of wasted time but occassionally, you find someone whose tree lines up with yours (meaning I've more data than they published, and found an overlap with their data and mine.) Then some hours spent in RootsIreland and IrishGenealogy looking for any records to support the tree data. Looking in my own files to see if any random bit or bobs I've found now have a home. And doing so has created an interesting thing - family trees of people who are dna related but with whom I cannot find a MCRA (most common recent ancestor). And I found a cluster of such folks, slowly building out family lines on my tree of people who were not related to me, except that someone contemporary is a dna match with moms side, dad's side or frustratingly more often, both sides. DNA cousins where the records say "not enough data". The use of dna is to help bridge the gaps left by the poor state of Mayo records, and I did that yesterday. I have a known ancestor named Luke Thornton. I've also spent two weeks building out these unconnected family lines when, using Ancestry's new features, realized that one whole segment ended up on a Stephen Thornton, close in age to the children of Luke Thornton. And if I link Stephen in as a son of Luke, these unconnected folks connect and the predicted level of dna "cousin" actually lines up with the tree.

Now there are no records for this family and Stephen could be Luke's nephew, his son, or the grandson of one of Luke's own father's brothers, all of which are not known to me. Zero records. But all of those placements would set up the dna predicted relationship so I decided to link that family in. I realize with no records, hey it's just a theory but the dna works and what records I do have support it. So I did link in some new Thorntons into the tree and will keep on looking for ways to further verify things. So just wanted to say that, because it should be docuimented.

December 8, 2021 - Incarmental changes

Spent long periods of Covid time just cleaning up things, running down rabbit holes and fixing mistakes. Adding more documentation when possible, and trying to noodle out things. For example, the Thornton thing I mentioned below ended up with me creating a hypothetical brother because I had dna matches to the Thorntons who were not linked to my direct line, but dna connected. When I create a "hypothetical" sibling and make the dna calculations, things hold together. So while I can't document anything about this sibling, there being one makes perfect sense for the way the dna works. Same with the existing records, they eliminate any chance of the link being in the direct line. But support there being a familiar connection. Covid time let me noodle out a few more such hypothetical siblings whose existence lets an unconnected branch link in and do so in a way that the dna works. It does feel odd but because the records for pre-1820 Mayo are virtually non-existent, these unnamed folks existed, we just don't know them. But when we hypothetically put those maybe relations in place, the dna says it's certainly a working hy[pothesis. And I'm OK with that, as long as it's documented.

April 22, 2021 - Change of mind

For a long time I had it in my head that a group of Thorntons that may be related were not because they were from "The Neale", Mayo. I've been spending a lot of time looking at maps, as geography is almost more important than all other factors in linking family. And it's not a strong point of mine. Anyway, it occurred to me that I was perfectly alright with Morrin connections who were across Loch Mask in Ballinrobe boating over to Tourmakeady and family marrying there. And I realized that I had "The Neale" in the wrong place. I thought it was much further north, outside of the usual marrying stomping grounds. And now I'm looking through over 20 years of files for the discussion I had with someone who tried to tell me my Thorntons were related to her Thorntons, something I said couldn't be, because they were from "The Neale". I was wrong. They could be related and that's a missed opportunity. Point being that you must always be open to things and admit you messed up. It's usually an honest mistake.

April 12, 2021 - DNA makes a difference

I've been looking at the Ancestry Thru Lines feature a lot. You must not assume it is right but it makes decent guesses. If you have a tree and a person has done as well, it can identify shared dna and provide things to review and consider. What it is good at is identifying a person's line. For example, it identified a possible match with a person with a small but detailed tree. I recognized some names, and found I had built out a stand alone tree of a whole group of folks where I had a Bridget McGing (about 1800) married to a John McNeely. I couldn't figure out where Bridget came into things and I had no known dna matches on that stand alone line. Until Thru-Lines said to look at this person's tree. I did. And when I did my own research, I could indeed document the dna tester's family line up and into the line I had already researched. Good solid records research that lead to my dead ended Bridget McGing. But the dna said I should be a 5th cousin or so, and my placing Bridget into a known era appropriate McGing family group as a sibling, tresulted in my software to classify the match as a 4th couin 1x removed. Or the dna equivelent of a 5th cousin.

Now I don't know if Bridget was an actual sibling in that family unit or if she really belonged to one of the other 3 family units I have of the same time frame and I never will know. There are no Mayo records of 1800 to document things. So while the linking of Bridget into that family unit is simply an educated guess and not "provable", the dna test insists that we are related and I am comfortable with the tree and this linkage is one way to fit that data together so it works. So I decided that to be my working hypothesis, not supported by paper (and never will be). With some luck, I'll get some folks on this line doing dna and find a couple more matches to cement things. But it brought a bunch of people into the McGing Tree, again supporting my conjecture that all McGings are cousins.

March 13, 2021 - St. Patrick's Day Update

Well, in recent times I was contacted by someone looking for her birth father. We've narrowed it down to somone in the paternal ancestral line for my grandfather, but that's a big group. Does anyone have a cop in Jersey City NJ in the 1950s as a relation? If so, contact me. In doing research, found some new Ancestry DNA matches that helped flesh out the tree. One such match gave me what I needed to link a previously unlinked line of many people into the "real" McGing tree. The dna connection with my dad only worked if this line was in the line of Myles McGing. Although there are no records to make that link via paper, the dna provided enough to make the linkage, albeit with a lot of warnings that this isn't supported by paper (and never will be). It brought a bunch of poeople into the McGing Tree, again supporting my conjecture that all McGings are cousins.

February 15, 2021 - Interesting things regarding name spelling maybe?

More Irish Familys by Edward Maclysaght says on page 111 - MacGinn, McGinn and its composite form Maginn are approximately equally numerous and are now found respectively in Counties Tyrone and Down. MacGinn, or MacGinne, is listed in the "census" of 1659 as a principal Irish name in the barony of Oneilland, Co. Armagh, i.e. the territory which lies between Tyrone and Down. The name is Mag Fhinn in Irish. This is anglicized MacGing, or Ging without the prefix, in the three Connacht counties of Mayo,Leitrim and Galway. In Mayo, according to Woulfe, the variant Mac Fhinn, which becomes MacKing, is also found, but if extant this is very rare. I have found no evidence to determine whether MacGing of Connacht is a branch of the Ulster sept.

So I took all the Petty Session Court Registers, 1818-1919 results for McGing from Ancestry and put them in a spreadsheet. Just started looking at them sorted via time, or by county or by location. And I'm seeing a LOT of McKings. So I went to John Grenham's web site and find very few McKings and most in Northern Ireland. So now I'm wondering if maybe we have some "used to be" McGings in there? It's all just a guess and something to explore, and I'm not at all sure, but this is how you turn over rocks looking for nuggest.

December 31, 2020 - OMG, let's hope 2021 is better in all ways. Despite tons of covid down time, somehow adding things here fell to the wayside. The family tree here is up to date. No breakthroughs, need more folks to take DNA tests. My wife got inducted into the Daughters of the American Revolution, and that took a lot of time. She has 5 5th-great-grandfathers who were in the Revolutionary War, but we could only document to their satisfaction just one such ancestor. But it got done. Wish Irish genealogy could go back that far...

May 24, 2020 - Been keeping the family tree here updated. Also, the tree at Ancestry may be a bit different. It's hard keeping both in synch. I also updated things with Village Names which has 2 new maps that come from the County Mayo Library and which show the village names. You get a sense of the land when you track families over geography.

February 13, 2020 - A tip of the hat to Michael Hambly. He's a dna related cousin, exactly how is a mystery being actively explored. And an internet pioneer with "Mayo on the Move". He has a site called "Ireland Roots" that is worth exploring. He also advised me of a web site glitch that I've fixed, making the site more secure.

January 25, 2020 - Found a very distant "cousin" on my dad's dna test with a family in Scotland, whose ancestry involves "Gings". I had fleshed out that line of McGings but was stuck in that I could not connect that line with anyone in the lines I've linked by DNA or records. But now with this dna test saying dad and this lady are 6th cousins, I can make the changes needed to get this line of McGings onto the main tree. Which I did.

January 1, 2020 - Well, I just redid the whole website. It's done in CSS and updated HTML and should now work on tablets and phones. Or maybe not, in places. It's going to be a work in progress as I tinker with reformatting data and tinkering with code. So if you run into issues, use Contact Me contact form.

As far as family history goes, I'm doing the usual records tweaking, looking for family matches on 23andMe, Ancestry, FTDNA and MyHeritage. As well as Gedmatch. I remain convinced that County Mayo based McGinn and Ging are all McGings, and that McGing is essentially a unique Co Mayo McGinn surname variant. But because of Mayo records issues, DNA is often the onlyway to make links. And even then the links may be hard to figure out due to the ways families intermarried, so many Joyces in folks family trees and inability to distinguish females well in the records. I do have to note the exceptions to this - the 1911 Irish Census shows 3 families using McGinn who are in Westport, One is a man born in Armagh, so he's likely a "Real" McGinn. Others were born in Galway, where a soldier named McGinn married a local girl. They are likely "real" McGinns as well. (It'd be interesting to see if any are DNA cousins.....) So there are exceptions to this rule, but the exceptions help prove the rule, I think. I have kept a running record of these updates, and you can find it here and on the drop down What's New menu.

I’m going to ask everyone who has an interest in this genealogy who has had a DNA test to please consider putting you test results online at gedmatch.com. It’s free and helps research tremendously.

Briefly, each of the testing companies gives you results, but only with people who have tested with them. There are 4 or more major DNA testing companies, but if someone tests at company A but you tested at company F, you won’t know about that possible match. What Gedmatch does is provide a place where people pool their test results across these companies, all in one common pool. And it has a bunch of free (and paid) tools if you are interested in getting deeper into this.

But the more people put their data there, the better we can figure out the dna linkages, which for Irish genealogy, is important due to the poor paper records. So I ask anyone who has tested, even if you didn’t put a family tree on Ancestry, for example, to put the data on Gedmatch and triple the number of people who can match against you. The Gedmatch IDs of my family are listed below.

Also, lease check out if you are an X-match or not on your test. If you are, look at my page on DNA X-Matches

My name is John McGing and my immediate ancestry is as follows:

Mother was Sarah Collins, born in Shanvallycahill, in the Cappaghaduff district, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo. Her father was John Collins of Shanvallycahill, her mother was Bridgit Conoboy. She came from a large family, some of whom are still in Tourmakeady, while the rest went to England or to the US, mainly in Chicago, Il. THere are a few other Collins families in Mayo, but family lore says they are not related. There was a Collins family nearby in Maamtrasna, but again, my family says they are not related (at least via Collins).

Father is John McGing, born in Churchfield, in the Cappaghaduff district, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo. His father was Thomas McGing of Churchfield, his mother was Bridget Donoghue. He also came from a large family, all of whom live in the States, again mainly in Chicago, except for one sister who lived in Dublin and one who lived in Tourmakeady.

Both are from places right on Loch Mask.

Here's a map of Mayo - We're from around Tourmakeady, which you can see is on the shores of Loch Mask in South Mayo.

Here is a much larger, older map of Mayo, circa 1890. Surprisingly, the home place, in Churchfield, was in Galway, until it was given to Mayo in a border change in 1898 - 1899 (meaning people need to check both Galway and Mayo records…)

Using documentation, my father’s people were originally from a townland called Arderry, as Great Great Grandfather Patrick is found in the 1818 rent rolls of Lord Sligo as a renter there, along with a Bryan McGing who I believe is likely a brother. There were a few McGings in Dublin in the late 1700s.

I love both sides of my family, but my dad’s side remembered more of their history than my mom’s. It’s a common situation, where the family honestly doesn’t know much about their ancestors, and the stories either weren’t told or never shared. That’s my issue on the Collin’s side. No real information about Great grandfather or further back. So it’s not with any ill intent I don’t have more on my maternal side, it’s simply I cannot find much. But I am always looking and want to flesh out that part of the tree. However, it does seem that we have a boatload of Joyces on both paternal and maternal sides.

I've tested autosomal dna at 23andme, Ancestry, FTDNA, MyHeritage and Living DNA. I've done Y-111, Big Y and the MtDNA. I have had many of my family tested and we are on Gedmatch.

My Gedmatch number is DK7908780. Other family tested as well are on Gedmatch and I can provide those numbers as needed (due to the controversies with Gedmatch recently, I opted to take those down but email me). My Y-DNA haplogroup is R-FT80635. My mtDNA haplogroup is T1a1.

I have to say that due to the state of Irish records for County Mayo, it is virtually impossible to document relatives 4th level and back. Even 3rd is tough, but when folks show up as 5th cousins, it's going to be almost impossible to document. But if the DNA says it is a link, we can build trees that reflect that possiblilities.

IMPORTANT! I have found that my Irish research tapers out at 2rd great grandparents, beyond that is lore, assumption and conjecture. That means cousins 4th or higher have to have better data than I do or have done some research themselves. I share with anyone but if DNA testing says we are 4th or 5th cousins, unless you have some records research of your own, it's very unlikely that I have anything either. Just saying up front. Please do check out my family tree, look for connections, but just don’t be surprised if I don’t have them already.

Also, County Mayo is brimming with endogamy - intermarriage. For example, my mom and dad are third(ish) cousins. My dad's father and mother were also third(ish) cousins. My dad's sister May's husband is a third(ish) cousin to her. There is a McGing family I am dna related to via my mom's people and not via McGing (so far). The point is, it's not an exaggeration to say that you could be distantly related to a big section of that part of the county if you have all 4 sets of grandparents from the area. It is exasperating.

McGing. Did the Chinese meet a Scotsman? Sorry, but have heard it a lot. It’s an unusual name and History of the Surname is interesting. And if you are really interested in what I've found, I'm making available a redacted version of the genealogical data I've gathered. Write me if you'd like to discuss getting access to this information. Due to concerns about privacy, I ask you write so we can discuss what you're looking for.

Understand, the data is always being changed and there are always mistakes and misunderstandings. I've named people odd names because I know a first name only, or a last name only or I only know they had 11 kids, 6 boys and 5 girls, things like that. This data has been secured from searching the internet, especially genealogical sites, contacts with other McGings, the sharing of data by others who have done their own research (and to whom we are all indebted) and searches of things like the LDS files. Where possible it is sourced, but see my note at the bottom of this page. I believe that we are indeed likely all to be cousins but it is only documented via DNA.

In addition, I've found a LOT of information in places that you'd not expect, and in order to preserve it, I've put it into an Adobe Acrobat file that you can find here. I've also listed some things I just didn't know where to put, so they are listed there. It's worth checking.

I’ve since created an offline datastore of pictures and pdf files of things like census, birth records, military records and more. It’s simply too large to put online, as the size would incur costs. But my point is I do have a lot of McGing documents identified and stored. If you are serious, please email me and I can make these available to you.

Must point out that I keep a family tree here that is always up to date. I have trees on Ancestry, Family Search, Geni, MyHeritage and Findmypast but the one here is always the most recent. If you missed the link at the upper left hand of each page, here it is again - McGing Family Tree.

When I was in Ireland, I found a whole nest of McGing’s in Westport, but it seems the connection with them was distant, if at all. It was kind of disconcerting to get a calendar from John McGing's place, which was a service station, as I recall. (Which is odd, come to think of it. The name is exceedingly rare, yet 2 groups of families with the same rare surname grow up near each other yet aren't related? What's up with that?)

Same applies in the States. My dad was confused with another John McGing who was in the Army at the same time he was, and they ended up living not far from each other on Chicago's NorthWest side. The other family even had a number of kids with the same names as my siblings. Yet we also never met. There's a boatload of McGing’s in and around Chicago, but the majority of them are not related to my side of the family. [I do have to say that I have now actually corresponded with some of those "other" McGing’s and it's neat to finally do so!]

And the Cleveland Ohio McGing’s all seem to be related to the Westport McGing’s, but not to me (they say). The Cincinnati Ohio McGing’s are related (1st cousins) and have the McGing Irish Dance School. The ones in Florida seem to be Cleveland McGing’s who have gone south. Then there is the odd one or two living in NY, Virginia, places like that that no one can seem to place. My mother told me we have McGing related cousins in Montana, they use McGinn. Color me confused. And I found McGinn cousins (via DNA) just outside Philadelphia. So I have found the folks who went to Montana, but it was back in the day. (But again, the name McGing in English does translate to McGinn, so such usage isn’t unexpected. In fact, I say with authority if you are a McGinn with Co Mayo roots, you are a McGing originally.

And what's with this Scottish connection anyway? There are McGing’s in Scotland, it seems we went there to work the fields, but why Stirling Scotland and why stay? What was so much better there that kept some McGing’s from returning to Ireland? (Seems the Irish were migrant labor for Scottish farms, the folks traveled to where the work was.)

Gerry McGing from Trim sent some very interesting information that I have made available here. We may now have a lead on where in the North to look for more McGing roots! It looks like they emigrated from Armagh to Mayo. Or not, if what Paul MacCotter says is true. Obviously this needs more investigation. Does anyone have family stories about where their families came from?

I guess I see two areas where we could connect yet have difficulty. My Gr Gr Grandfather had to have siblings, yet I know nothing about him and his family. Could we be related through one of his brothers? Or could we be related through one of his sons? A couple of them had a LOT of boys, yet I've nothing on them. These seem to me to be the biggest area that would pay off in detecting this elusive family link.

One of the many bright spots in the family claim to fame is my 1st cousin is Mick Lally who was an Irish actor (played "Miley" on Glenroe on RTE, was a regular on "Ballykissangel," played in "Circle of Friends" as Minnie Drivers dad, and was in the great movie "The Secret of Roan Inish" as the grandfather) His mom (RIP) is my dad's sister (May Lally, who was a great contributor to the Tourmakeady "Waterfall") and before he died, he was a favorite at Maire Lukes. Another is the fact that my family has a history with Irish dance, in that my cousin Mary (already noted) and my cousin Jimmy (now a lawyer and ex-judge) taught/teach Irish dance. While Jimmy doesn't do it anymore, his ex-partner Mark Howard does.

My research has shown that the spelling of the name takes many forms; McGing, McGinn, McCinn, Ging, Ginn and other odd spellings. And the Gaelic is McGinn but the English is McGing, so the mixed use does make sense.

One other interesting fact is that if you put "McGing" into a search engine, you get a lot of hits. It used to be a toss-up between me and Dr. Brian McGing at Trinity as to whose name is found most often, but his references are starting to really mount up but the links for my cousin Mary, who owns an Irish dance school, have really started to overshadow us all!

But in the end, as I say , in my DNA analysis section here the case is strong that all McGings are indeed related

Besides my family, my other abiding interest is the rare genetic syndrome my son has. The section below explains a bit and links you to my pages about the syndrome. Perhaps one reason I've developed this abiding interest in where I have come from is knowing that my son will not have any children. My daughter will live her life and I don't mean to sound like I'm ignoring her; on the contrary, she's very precious to me. But I realize that my "line" is ending, at least as it goes forward carrying the McGing surname. But he's a great lad, and so I'd be neglectful if I didn't drop this in here.

The Chromosome 18 Registry and Research Society

This is a link to the Chromosome 18 Registry and Research Society. My son Sean has a genetic condition called tetrasomy 18p which is very rare. The Registry is a great support group and is an organization always looking for assistance. For anyone in the US who can contribute to the Combined Federal Campaign, look for them as a recipient group or check them out and contact them directly.

In addition, if you are in the US and participate in the United Way, be aware that although the Registry isn't a direct participant in the UW, you can use the "Donor Direct" option to specify the Registry for your gift. For anyone outside the US, please contact the Registry in San Antonio (using the link above).

Seriously, this isn't like Jerry's Kids or March of Dimes stuff, where there is a lot of publicity and people throw money at them. Nope, these conditions are rare and virtually unknown and there's been little research done on them. Please keep them in mind when considering any charitable contributions.

I'd be remiss if I did not give full credit and approbation to the many people whose work has been so important in doing this research. I've been lucky to be able to build on the shoulders of many fine people whose hard work they willingly shared. There is Sr. Helen, Carl "MacMan", Mary Chervenak, Elaine O'Malley, Michael McGing, Pam Burg, Tom Kenny, Jackie Filippone, Nicola Batmaz, Mary Duffy, Jean Baun, Patrick Connolly, Jim McGinn and others. If you find anything of value in these pages, their contributions were indeed a major part of it.

And a special thanks to all of you who have done DNA tests because it’s the only way to figure this stuff out J My sincere thanks

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out what may or may not be obvious. And that is this: I am not a professional genealogist, and a lot of the material I have here has not been sourced to original documents. I have tried whenever possible to give a source, including family history, whenever I could, but as I've been told, your work isn't done until you have checked the original sources. That doesn't mean that everything here is worthless; that's certainly not true! Everything here is as accurate as I can make it, but things I typed in myself from sources may indeed have typos. Sources I link to may have errors. But that doesn't make their value any less, it just means you really need to check things out where possible using original source documents. As I get a look at original documents myself I'll update entries to reflect that fact.