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From: "Colin Ferguson" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] What's the connection here?
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 09:35:38 -0800


John,
The Ferguson to whom you refer changed their name from FERGUS when
they came to the US. These FERGUS can be traced back to Westport,
county Mayo circa 1800.

In the Fergus(s)on DNA project there are 21 different persons who are
R1b1c7, this FERGUS line is the only one with DYS447=24. It is also
the only line with DYS437=14; everybody else is 15.

>From GoIreland.com:
The name Ó Farghuis or Ó Fearghusa takes several forms in English.
Apart from Farrissy, which today occurs only occasionally, the two
usual forms are Fergus and Ferris. Fergus or O'Fergus is seldom found
outside Connacht. Persons so called, who are mainly in Co. Mayo at the
present time, are of the sept of Ó Fearghuis, which provided
hereditary physicians to the O'Malleys. Knox in his History of Mayo
tells us that O'Fergus held the parish of Burrishoole in 1303 and
ranked then as a minor chief, a status no longer obtaining in 1585,
since they do not figure in the Composition Book of Connacht, though
it is known the Strafford Survey that they were still considerable
landholders in Burrishoole and.Carra about the year 1635. In that
document the name is spelt Farregish, Faregesie and O'Farressie, while
in the Mayo Book of Survey & Distribution, compiled some 50 years
later, it occured as often as O'Farrissy. It was in the northern end
of that county, adjacent to Co. Sligo, that Pendar's "census" shows
them, as O'Fergussa, most numerous in 1659.
Cheers,
Colin Ferguson

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