DNA refutes   Professor's   Kingly Claim

MARTIN CROFTON McLAUGHLIN, MA, FRHistS (1900-81) wore tails, a wing collar and spats when he attended his sister Rosemary's wedding in 1927. The author of a history textbook Newest Europe (London: 1931), Martin was senior History Master at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, and later a professor at Rollins College, Florida.

He was appointed one of His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools in 1939, the year Crofton, his father, died, making Martin the senior McLaughlin late of the Lydiates. Later he owned a school in Doune, Perthshire, but it failed because he had become an alcoholic.

Ulster King of Arms Sir William Betham had declared that our family descended from the Kings of Aileach (now counties Tyrone, Tirconell and Derry), entitling us to the coat of arms of the McLaughlins of Tirconnell sept, shown below in the bookplate engraved for various members of the family.

However Martin's research led him to believe that we descended from the Ó Maoilseachlainns (progeny of Malachy II, monarch of all Ireland) who remained Kings of Meath into the 16th century. Ó Maoilseachlainn (meaning devotee of Saint Patrick's nephew Saint Sechnall) was anglicised to O'Melaghlin before changing to McLaughlin. There is only the tenuous link that the ancestry of Martin's grandmother Frederica includes Edward Crofton (1566-1627) and his wife Elizabeth, née Mostyn, whose maternal grandfather was Phelim O'Melaghlin, King of Meath.

None the less Martin wrote to all members of our family suggesting that they call themselves O'Melaghlin and use the sept's armorial bearings, displayed at the top of this page. The response was a resounding silence.

Geneticists at Trinity College Dublin have identified Y-chromosome DNA markers indicative of descent from Ui Neill, the High King of Ireland about 400AD, also called Nial of the Nine Hostages. The O'Melaghlins were the Southern Sept of Ui Neill's descendants, and the McLaughlins of Tirconnell the Northern Sept.

However testing shows that David McLaughlin's DNA does not match the markers, so Martin and Bentham were both wrong. Our family does not have Irish as well as British royal blood. In fact the family's male haplogroup is R1b, the most common among European populations. People belonging to that haplogroup are believed to have expanded throughout Europe when humans re-colonized the continent after the last ice age about 11,000 years ago.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
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