Irish Clues in Ancestry's Community Inheritance Report

This week I took another look at my Ancestry DNA Communities: "These are groups of people who share a significant number of matches with each other. Community members likely descend from a group of people who traveled to (or are from) the same place around the same time."¹

I discovered that under each community breakdown is a list of a test taker's top three matches in that community. And it appears that it is the outlier match in each of these trios—the least common denominator—who is the most helpful in determining which line the match comes from in my family.

Teasing out which of my matches belong to which of my Irish lines is a task. I have several different paternal Irish lines which can roughly be grouped into my Ontario Irish lines and my Scranton/Cleveland Irish lines:

• Gilbride - Ireland > Scranton > Cleveland
• Ryan - Ireland? > Scranton
  
• McAndrew - Ireland > Scranton > Cleveland
• Kelly - Ireland > Scranton > Cleveland
  
• Cassidy - Ireland > Ontario
• Dyer - Ireland > Scotland > Ontario
• Sheridan - Ireland > Ontario
• and others...
  

I have three Ancestry Communities in particular that are part of my Irish heritage: 

• North East Mayo/North West Sligo
• North Mayo
• South West Mayo

Looking at the top three matches in each of these communities led me to some interesting speculation. 

North East Mayo/North West Sligo

My top two matches in this community are close family members. The third match is a 2nd cousin. As a group our most recent common ancestral couple is Joseph Gilbride and Margaret McAndrew, both born in Scranton.²

Going back a generation to look at Margaret's Irish-born parents, Patrick McAndrew and Anne Kelly, a marriage record from Addergoole Parish may document their marriage. A Patrick McAndrew and Ann Kelly, of Bofeenaun, were wed on 18 February 1863. Bofeenaun is a townland within Addergoole Civil Parish in the geographic bounds of Ancestry's North East Mayo/North West Sligo community.³

This second cousin match seems to share more McAndrew line matches with me than Gilbride line matches—it could be that they got more DNA from the McAndrew side of the family. So my theory is that it is my McAndrew/Kelly lines are from this North East Mayo/North West Sligo community. 

Addergoole Parish, County Mayo, shown on OpenStreetMap.4

North Mayo

Again, my two top matches in this community are close family. My third, more "outlier" match in the North Mayo community is a first cousin, once removed (1C1R). While I share all my Irish lines with the top two matches, it is the outlier match which points to Edward Baker and Catherine Cassidy as the group's most recent common ancestral couple.⁵

As a group, our Irish lineage from this couple must come through Catherine Cassidy, as Edward was not Irish, but German/Belgian. Catherine was born in Ontario to Charles Cassidy and Maria Jane Darah, both Canadian-born. Charles Cassidy's father, Philip Cassidy, was born in Ireland and perhaps in this North Mayo area.⁶

Again, it was this outlier 1C1R match which helps pinpoint which line most likely came from that geographic region. It's possible that me, my 1C1R, and all the DNA matches we share in common have ancestors from this region of Ireland as well.

Ancestry's North Mayo Community.7

South West Mayo

While I have many Irish challenges, my Ryan line has been the hardest nut to crack. My matches in this South West Mayo community, though, are quite interesting. As background, I have several groups of DNA matches who don't fall in any of my other lines but who share combinations of Ryan, O'Malley, and Duffy among their ancestral surnames.

My three matches in this South West Mayo community are one close family member, and two outlier matches who are possibly fourth or fifth cousins (4-5C). Though I am unsure of our common ancestral couple, these two matches' most distant identified ancestral couples are Thaddeus O'Malley/Honora McNally, and John Ryan/Sabina O'Malley.⁸

• Thaddeus O'Malley's obituary listed his birthplace as "Slogger" in County Mayo—more likely Slaugar—located to the north of Westport in Mayo. Thaddeus and his family later immigrated to the Carbondale, Pennsylvania area, near to Scranton, until about the 1870s when he and some of his family moved to Nebraska.⁹ 
  
• Prior research indicated that John Ryan and Sabina O'Malley baptized children in Westport prior to their immigration to the Scranton area between 1875-1880.¹⁰
  
• My Ryan and Gilbride lines converge in Scranton in 1875, with the marriage of my second great grandparents Michael Gilbride and Catherine Ryan.¹¹
  

Slaugar and Westport are both located within this South West Mayo community:

South West Mayo map from Ancestry's Communities.12

My hunch is that Catherine Ryan's ancestors were O'Malleys and these O'Malley lines connect perhaps a generation or two further back, and come from this South West Mayo area. If so, then the two possible 4-5C-range matches, and all the matches we share, likely all have South West Mayo roots in common. They could be the key to my Ryan conundrum.

I'm glad I happened upon this breakout of matches by community on Ancestry's Origins reports. Though some of my closest matches will likely carry DNA from most if not all of our Irish lineages, it was helpful to see the other, more distant matches define which of my Irish ancestral lines may have come from particular regions in Ireland. 

What about you? Can you make any hypotheses about your Ancestry DNA matches from viewing this Community Inheritance report? Tell me about it in the comments. Access your report under DNA > Origins > scroll down to Community Inheritance  > scroll down to Meet Your Matches.

Until next time...

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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.

NOTES

¹ Ancestry (https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-Communities?language=en_US : accessed 20 May 2024), "AncestryDNA® Communities."

² "Community Inheritance," personalized report, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 May 2024), Nancy Gilbride Casey, "North East Mayo and North West Sligo" matches.

³ Addergoole, County Mayo, Ireland, “Ireland, Select Catholic Marriage Registers, 1775-1912,” McAndrew-Kelly (18 Feb 1863); database and digital images, “A Registry of Marriages by the Rev. P. McHale, P.P. of Addergoole 1860,” image 24, Ancestry (http://Ancestry.com : accessed 2 Feb 2019); citing Celtic Catholic Registers. Digitized images. Dublin, Ireland: E-Celtic, Limited. While it is possible that this church record documents the couple's marriage, further evidence is needed to confirm it.

⁴ Townlands.ie (https://www.townlands.ie/mayo/addergoole2/ : accessed 18 May 2024), "Townlands in Addergoole," OpenStreetMap, 19 April 2026. OpenStreetMap^® is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). For copyright info, see https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.

⁵ "Community Inheritance," personalized report, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 May 2024), Nancy Gilbride Casey, "North Mayo" matches.

⁶ Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, Baptismal Register p. 129, birth/baptism of Catherine Ann Cassidy, 12 & 18 April 1886;  "Canada, Ontario Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYWX-6L5 : accessed 11 January 2022. Also, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada), "Baptismal Register, 1860-1906," p. 1, baptism of Charles F. Cassidy, 7 Dec. 1860; digital images, Ancestry, "Ontario, Canada, Roman Catholic Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1760-1923," (https://bit.ly/2VRK5Yu : accessed 5 July 2020), image 107/554; citing Archdiocese of St. Catharines, Ontario. Also, Ontario, Office of Registrar General, County of Lincoln, Division of St. Catharines, Marriage Registrations 1869-1911,  Unit "D," 1884, p. 537 (stamped), #25 (inked)/#6676 (stamped), marriage of Charles Cassady and Maria Jane Darah, 20 June 1883; database & images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y39T-XNJ : accessed 27 January 2022); citing Archives of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. Also, Canada, 1851 census, Lincoln, Ontario, population schedule, Township of Grantham, page 67 (stamped), No. 3 (penned), line 31, Philip Casedy; imaged in "Canada, Ontario Census, 1861," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DWY7-DHM : accessed 20 May 2024); citing Public Archives, Toronto.

⁷ "Ethnicity Estimate," personalized report, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 May 2024), Nancy Gilbride Casey, North Mayo Community Map.

⁸ "Community Inheritance," personalized report, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 May 2024), Nancy Gilbride Casey, "South West Mayo" matches.

⁹ "Born 1902; Died, 1902," The Frontier (O'Neill, Nebraska), 29 May 1902, p. 1, col. 1; image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-frontier-thaddeus-omalley-obit/141145372/ : accessed 13 May 2024). Also, Nancy Gilbride Casey, "Thaddeus O'Malley's Timber Culture Grant," blog post, Leaves on the Tree (https://myleavesonthetree.blogspot.com/ : posted 15 May 2024).

¹⁰ Nancy Gilbride Casey, "Sabina O'Malley Ryan," research report, December 2020, pgs. 2, 4.

¹¹ Holy Rosary Church, (Scranton, Luzerne, Pennsylvania), Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Marriages 1860-87, p. 212, marriage of Michael Gilbride & Catherine Ryan (2 Feb. 1875); digital image, “Teresa M. McAndrew Memorial Catholic Record Collection,” Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, supplied to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Tioga, TX.

¹² Ethnicity Estimate," personalized report, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 May 2024), Nancy Gilbride Casey, South West Mayo Community Map.