Any amateur genealogist who researches the DeArmond surname variants of America to any depth, becomes aware of the magnitude of the related variations and vast number of paternal line descendants in North America. For a relatively moderate size native Irish clan that seems to be all but forgotten and ignored, or considered to have become extinct by many modern authors and historians of Irish history, the number of male paternal line descendants in the world today who carry the Y chromosome DNA of the clan's ancient hereditary chieftains, must exceed at least tens of thousands. To quote the 14th century Irish poet John O'Dugan about the O'Duibhdhiorma: "The noblest clan of the race of Owen. A tribe that has prospered without peace". Therefore how did the clan paternal Y chromosome DNA marker SNP FGC4113 continue to survive through centuries of adversity and be found today with so much abundance?
The surprising uniformity of individual Gaelic clan male Y DNA suggested by the patronymic prefixes of Mac, Mc (son of) or Ua, O' (grandson or descendant of) used by all males of a clan was achieved by the tradition of serial monogamy practiced by clan chieftains. He would successively marry women from neighboring clans for less than 5 years and then send each back to her parents without her sons. Thereby upon his death, the most powerful and popular of his sons was chosen as the next chieftain, insuring only one male Y chromosome haplotype would dominate within the clan. This tradition is corroborated in Y DNA SNP tree charts that remarkably correspond to the monastery genealogies of Gaelic clan heredity back to at least to the 5th century A.D.
I would surmise that the Protestant variants of North America likely comprise a third or less of the total number of men on the earth who carry the Y chromosome DNA SNP marker FGC4113 which signifies paternal line descent from the original male progenitor of the native Irish clan of O'Duibhdhiorma whose hereditary chieftains were once Tighearna or lords of the small kingdom of An Breadach which comprised the eastern third of the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland. Many other members of the clan who migrated to or were forcibly removed to near and far regions of Ireland remained Catholic and borrowed other common Irish names such as McDermott, McDearmond, Byrne, Lennon or Bellew which was actually an Anglo/Norman Catholic surname of a distinguished family of County Galway.
By the 14th century, events had left the clan of O'Duibhdhiorma isolated from it's brother clans of the Cenel Eoghain. They were now subservient to the Cenel Conaill and the populous O'Doherty clans. They learned to accept O'Doherty domination and acted in concert with their overlords, in some cases acting as jailers of the political prisoners of the O'Doherty clans or taking part in the failed rebellion of Cahir O'Doherty against the British.
In the late 16th century, British efforts to dominate Ulster were renewed with eventual success after the defeat of the Irish and their Spanish allies at the battle of Kinsale in 1602. Ulster Irish were left without their traditional leadership after the O'Donnell and O'Neill earls fled by ship to Europe in 1607. By 1608, the sole remaining Irish leader was the youthful Anglophile Prince of Inishowen, Cahir O'Doherty who hoped to receive an appointment to the English royal court in London. However he became disillusioned when newly appointed British governor George Paulet allowed Cahir's land to be gradually confiscated by British landholders who had contempt for the Irish Catholics. After his complaints were ignored and he was treated in an exceedingly ill manner by Paulet and the British authorities in Dublin, Cahir grew increasingly angered and vengeful. He allowed himself to be unwisely persuaded to attack and burn Londonderry. Cahir's men killed Paulet and abused the British women they captured. Because of Cahir's immature and irresponsible leadership, the rebellion was unsupported by many Ulster Irish chieftains and their followers, except mainly for men from Inishowen including the clan of O'Duibhdhiorma, Their names can be seen on the surviving lists of pardons granted to remaining rebels of Cahir's army that were not executed or deported to serve as involuntary conscripts in the Swedish army.
Within a few weeks strong British forces countered the rebellion and Cahir was killed by a musket ball in a skirmish. His head was severed and taken to Dublin and impaled on a spike as a warning to the Irish not to resist British authority. Ironically a court in Dublin finally upheld Cahir's right to have his land restored to him, but word did not reach him in time to avoid his rash actions. Inishowen became completely controlled militarily by the British who realized it was the best location from which to subdue the remainder of Ulster. The descendants of the once proud O'Duibhdhiorma clan were reduced to pastoral indigents with no land to call their own except the remote inland hills of that third of the peninsula that their ancestors once ruled. British Protestant mal treatment and persecution of the native Catholic Irish led to the inevitable uprisings that occurred throughout Ireland in 1641. Because of strong British military presence on Inishowen, the peninsula remained pacified and peaceful throughout the next eleven years that brought much death and destruction throughout most of the rest of Ireland.
Left: Phelim O'Neill, one of the Irish gentry leaders of the 1641 rebellion, unfavorably characterized in an English print propaganda sketch. Right: Oliver Cromwell, honored in England, but despised in Ireland and Scotland for his religious zealotry and brutal suppression of rebellions in both countries.
Left: Complete English control of print media in the 17th century allowed them to publish hundreds of illustrations of fiendish atrocities reputedly committed by Irish rebels. Right: Not till the 19th century were the Irish in turn able to publish their own illustrations of atrocities committed by Oliver Cromwell and his vengeful "New Model Army" which devastated much of Ireland.
According to John O'Donovan (1861), after the end of the mid century turmoil, many native Irish Catholics migrated or were forcibly removed from Inishowen south to the province of Connachta . Y chromosome DNA testing results for SNP FGC4113 suggest this must have certainly been the source for many Catholic O'Duibhdhiorma Y DNA results found in Sligo and Galway and other counties of Ireland.
Modern photo of Moville (Magh Bhile) which once lay at the heart of An Breadach of eastern Inishowen, the ancient homeland of the clan of O'Duibhdhiorma.
This diaspora from Inishowen is evident also in two different census taken between 1659 and 1665. A privately funded census was taken beginning after the 1652 "Act for the settlement of Ireland" and completed in 1659 by the English with intent to annex the land and remove Irish inhabitants in order to provide land to reward Cromwell's soldiers. Classifying Irish, Scot and English was often erroneous based on how difficult it was for the Anglo-Irish recording officials to understand a person's speech. Many of the Ulster Scots were monoglot Gaelic speakers, as were most native Irish, therefore Scots were sometimes recorded as Irish. The O'Dermond surname was recorded 35 times in Inishowen Barony. Evidently this represented heads of households for the existing clan population in eastern Inishowen.
In 1665, a Hearth money role tax census was taken. The census was broken down by parishes making a total tally of O'Dermond and variants uncertain, but perhaps only about a dozen adult male individuals were recorded within the Barony of Inishowen. There certainly appears to be a significant decrease in population. This abrupt decrease was likely the result of the afore mentioned forced exodus south to Connachta Province. "To Hell or Connachta" became a commonly used phrase in Ireland at the time that survives today. Those native Irish who were employed as tenant farmers, servants or needed occupations were allowed to remain in their indigenous counties.
I must resort to conjecture when attempting to determine when a second major exodus occurred from Inishowen by those O'Duibhdhiorma who sought employment as tenant farmers in other areas of Protestant Ulster. Due to discriminatory laws also passed by the English Anglicans (Episcopal) against the Non Conformist Presbyterians and the sunset of rent control laws, a fifty year exodus of Ulster Scots ensued beginning about 1725, with most emigrating to North America and primarily Pennsylvania. This left often heavily indebted landlords without tenant farmers to provide rental income. Consequently the landholders were willing to hire native Irish as long as they complied with the law and converted to Protestant religions. These native Irish would become the Presbyterian converts and gradually integrate themselves as part of the continuing Ulster Scot (Scotch-Irish) migration to North America.
From the Ysearch.org Y chromosome DNA STR/SNP FGC4113 chart shown below, the Protestant converted families (orange tint) appear to have been relatively closely related and separated somewhat from the known FGC4113 Catholics (green tint, I included only a sampling of all Catholic positive results). This separation appears to have occurred at least a century before most of the Protestant O'Duibhdhiorma began their emigration to North America in the mid 18th century.
The clan survives today not in the once traditional Celtic manner of a close knit community with all males of the clan sharing the same bloodline of the clan's hereditary chieftains (Y chromosome DNA), but in the Y DNA SNP marker FGC4113 that exists in surprising abundance throughout much of the English speaking world.
