Ancestors of Robert McCutcheon

Hugh McCutcheon¹

#730

Relationship

4th great-grandfather of Robert Stewart McCutcheon.

Last Edited

25 Nov 2007

Charts

My ancestors
Hugh McCutcheon's descendants

Marriage*

31 Oct 1778

Mary Thomson; Barr, Ayrshire, Scotland²

Occupation*

Farmer

Note*

Hugh McCutcheon was my great-great-great-great grandfather and the earliest McCutcheon ancestor I've been able to trace so far.
The McCutcheons are a sept of the mighty Clan MacDonald, in their case the Sleat branch (Clann Uisdein). The name derives from Hugh, younger son of Alexander, 9th Lord of the Isles. Sleat is a peninsula on the southern shores of the Isle of Skye. According to my Aunt Anne our branch of McCutcheons reached Ayrshire from Northern Ireland - perhaps en route from Skye ? Unfortunately, I have been unable to confirm this anecdote. So this Hugh McCutcheon remains my earliest McCutcheon ancestor.

What I have been able to do is to find the Y chromosome genetic signature of Hugh's male lineage. According to results from Oxford Ancestors the Y chromosome of Hugh, his direct male descendants (including of course myself) is highly probable to be of Celtic origin. In fact it is 90% Celtic makeup and the remaining 10% being Norse Viking.
Oxford Ancestors analysis of our McCutcheon Y chromosome DNA shows that it is likely we have inherited it from the earliest inhabitants of the British Isles. There is an intriguing genetic connection between the McCutcheon 'Y' and those found in the Iberian peninsula, especially amongst the Basques. This suggests that the ancestor of Hugh and his descendants took part in the vigorous sea-borne traffic between Ireland, western Britain and the Atlantic seaboard of France and Spain, which archeologists have long suspected. This connection began with the pre-farming hunters and fishermen and continued with the peoples who built the large stone monuments, the megaliths which also link these western sites from Spain to Scotland.
This ties in with further analysis of the McCutcheon Y chromosome by the Genographic organisation which identifies the McCutcheon 'Y' belonging to the haplogroup R1b, a lineage defined by a genetic marker called M343. This haplogroup are the direct descendants of Europe's first modern humans known as the Cro-Magnons, who arrived in Europe 30,000 years ago.
The McCutcheon M343 ancestor was a descendant of an earlier Y carrier identified as part of the marker M173. This group arrived in Europe 35,000 years ago from the frozen steppes of central Asia, amongst their number were the cave painters of Lascaux and Chauvet. Soon after the arrival of the M173 in Europe the era of the Neanderthals came to a close. Evidence from genetic research has shown that the Neanderthals were not ancestors of modern humans but an evolutionary dead end.
The marker before M173 was M45 who was to be found in the bleak frozen lands of central Asia. M45 was part of the M9 clan who emerged in southern central Asia, possibly Iran 40,000 years ago. Most people in the Northern hemisphere trace their roots to this large clan. M9 split into two, some went south to into what is now Pakistan and India while the ancestors of the McCutcheon M173 moved north to central Asia.
The ancestor of the McCutcheon M9 was off the haplogroup M89 - a marker common to 90 to 95 % of non-Africans - who emerged about 45,000 years ago in either northern Africa or the Middle East and were the second migration of humans from an Africa suffering from drought.

The earliest ancestor of the McCutcheons and the haplogroup we belong to has the marker M168. This man lived in north-east Africa, perhaps the Rift Valley about 50,000 years ago and he is the common ancestor of every non-African man living today. There were approximately 10,000 other humans in the world at that time.

Family

Mary Thomson

Child

Hugh McCutcheon+ (c 1788 - 1869)

Citations

Copy death certificate: Hugh McCutcheon, 1869.
Microfilm Old Parish Registers, Ayrshire.