I know it is accepted wisdom that DNA is mainly a tool to help confirm your paper tree, but I have added the surname McCarthy to my pedigree based on DNA matches.
I had a brick wall with my paternal great-grandparents, Adam and Grace Fitzell of Ireland, whose children were born in co Cork and/or co Kerry in the 1820s. This is my only paternal Irish line. For decades, Grace was a huge mystery for me, and it has been very rewarding to provide her with a maiden name, ie McCarthy, by analysing my DNA matches.
As an aside, Fitzell is an Irish-Palatine family, and they were Protestants. I have written about my success in identifying Adam Fitzell’s ancestry from DNA matches, see reference below.
it took some detective work to identify Grace’s name, as there were no known surviving records of it. I knew from family stories that my great-grandmother Mary Anne Fitzell was born 1828 at Millstreet, co Cork. I found a head of household called Grace Fitzell at Millstreet in the 1851 Griffith Valuations; and the surviving registers for Drishane parish, which included Millstreet, showed Grace and Henry (who I knew from family stories was Mary Anne’s police constable brother) as the witnesses to a wedding in 1853. I concluded that Mary Anne’s mother was this Grace. I later found her 1876 death notice which stated that Grace, relict of Adam Fitzell, aged 74 had died at the residence of her son P A Fitzell, Coastguard Station, Ballyheigue, Co Kerry. I knew from family stories that Mary Anne Fitzell had a brother named Peter who was a coast guard.
[EDIT as at 29 February 2024. I have just discovered the original 1856 parish record of the marriage of Mary Anne Fitzell and James Gill, a soldier online, in the British Armed Forces And Overseas Banns And Marriages, Civil Marriages, UK Collection, at findmypast.com. They married in 1856 at Malta, around the time of the end of the Crimean War. It provided the birthplace and parents’ names for Mary Anne Fitzell, ie she was a spinster, daughter of Adam and Grace Fitzell, born Ireland. This would have been mind-blowing if I had discovered it when I first started my search for Mary Anne’s parents, but now it just confirms what I have discovered by other means.]
My paternal cousins and I had dozens of matches with Americans who had Bell and Shannon ancestry originating in Ireland. I knew that they had to be connected to my Fitzell ancestry, because it is my only paternal Irish line. I traced this Bell-Shannon family and discovered they descended from John Shannon and Catherine McCarthy, who married in a Catholic ceremony in 1834 at Kinsale, co Cork. Witnesses were Eugene McCarthy and Mary McCarthy, who may have been Catherine’s siblings.
McCarthy was already a familiar name to me in connection with my Fitzells. Francis McCarthy was a witness at the 1863 marriage at Ballyheigue, co Kerry, of Peter Adam Fitzell (brother of my Mary Anne); McCarthy O’Leary, JP provided a reference when Henry Fitzell (brother of my Mary Anne), joined the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1856; and Peter Fitzell named a daughter Grace McCarthy Fitzell in 1864. So I had long suspected that McCarthy might have been a family connection, but could not be sure that the McCarthys were not influential friends, rather than family. With these American DNA matches, I felt I could confidently say that Grace was a McCarthy (most likely Catherine’s sister, given their similar ages, and the relatively close American DNA matches). As they were a co Cork family, this meant I could rule out the McCarthys as being an ancestor of Grace’s husband Adam Fitzell, as I had already confirmed his county Limerick background. He had moved to county Cork when he joined the Royal Irish Constabulary.
If I had not done the groundwork of tracing all of Adam and Grace’s children, whose names I knew from family stories, the significance of the McCarthy name would probably have escaped me.
I realise that these examples may not comply with strict genealogical standards of the past, but in the absence of surviving records, it is all we have. In fact, I suggest that DNA evidence is more compelling than any documents! I am very pleased with my experience, and hope one day for similar success with my two maternal brick walls – one in Ireland and one in Scotland.
NB. I have posted a blog about Grace’s husband, Adam Fitzell, called “MY IRISH ANCESTORS WERE GERMAN: The Fischel family from the Palatine became the Fitzell family of co Limerick”, 2 Nov 2019.
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UPDATE 11 August 2021.
I have recently identified Grace’s parents as Cornelius McCarthy and Anne Benner. This came about because DNA matches established my connection with Margaret McCarthy born ca 1815, who married Francis James Bailey in February 1836 at Ballymacelligott, Kerry, Ireland. They emigrated to New Zealand in 1862, together with their 11 children. Margaret’s parents’ names were identified by her 1897 New Zealand death certificate.
I quickly discovered DNA connections with Benner descendants, and found to my astonishment that the Benner family was also of Irish-Palatine descent, as Anne was the daughter of Henry Benner and Elizabeth Dolmage, who in turn was the sister of Mary Dolmage, nee Fitzell. Therefore I am descended from two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Dolmage.
This was a great relief to me, as I had been aware of many matches who had shared DNA with both my distant McCarthy cousins AND my distant Dolmage cousins. Now these dual matches have an explanation.
My 3GGF Cornelius McCarthy born ca 1770, possibly at Castleisland, co Kerry, remains a mystery for now. He probably represents my only ethnic Irish ancestry.
jeanffrench 
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