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The DNA of Clan Grant

To go to the independent Grant DNA Project
website where you can see the results - and join -
click through......... here

Below you can read a brief discussion of the implications of the results so far

DNA Vindicates the Highland Seannachie
Science has proved the Seannachies right and Sir William Fraser (Chiefs of Grant) wrong.

It was a long time ago – probably around 2002 – that DNA was first discussed as a way forward to sifting through the problems that we faced. Professor Sykes with his Oxford Ancestors was very much in the news explaining how DNA could be used to show elements of a person’s ancestry. But at that time the science was in its infancy and what was on offer then was not going to address our problem. As is too often the case it was the Americans who saw the commercial angle, with the company Family Tree DNA being set up primarily based on identifying specific aspects of the Y Chromosome (inherited only by males and only through the father). By doing the research within a surname structure (this also inherited normally through the father) great synergy can be obtained – ie if you share the surname AND you share the genes then there is a FAR higher chance that you are indeed related in historical times.

The first Grant DNA sample was analysed in the spring of 2004 courtesy of the generous hosting of the MacDonalds who already had their project up and running. But by now this was spreading like wildfire and it was but a few weeks later that a Grant project was set up independently of any Clan Grant Society by a Grant in the USA

The Chiefly line
Very early on many Grants who had no such idea or any expectation discovered to their delight that they were blood members of the chiefly line. As we pieced their lineages together we have been able to specify the DNA signature of many of the cadet lines. Among these lines are:
(a) Corrimony: This line descends from John Grant, son of the Bard Roy. In this case it is no doubt a relief for the participants including Chris the Chef and Kiwi Peter to see their signatures match the prospective chieftain himself!
(b) Lurg: This line descends from Robert, son of Duncan Grant younger of Freuchie.
(c) Glenlochy (otherwise the MacRobbies): Tradition is that this line is from an illegitimate son of Robert Grant the Ambassador. Descendants of this line found themselves involved in the Canadian fur trade

Our hope is that more members of known cadet lines will join in to allow others to be able to narrow their search when trying to extend their family trees and link in to the known chiefly line.

At this point (the reason will become clear later) we should note that the proven Lurg tree (ie in this case we are 100% sure) showed up to be only 60% likely from DNA – in other words if you took ten examples four would turn out not to be the case.

A few of the project members had a DNA signature which was fairly close to the Chiefly line, but nevertheless far enough away for them not to be included in that group automatically. I urged the project coordinators to consider them as possible connections. They were sceptical, but to humour me they set them up as a sub-group with loads of question marks!

Viking members
From a very early stage we had what looked like a good candidate for a representative of the old Viking Chiefs, as another American member tested R1a1, and not just “any old” R1a1, but the particular sub-group which fitted the old stories (so, for example, NOT the same sub-group as Somerled, the King of the Isles and progenitor of the MacDonalds) – but the problem was that we did not know enough his pedigree – so that had to wait for confirmation of some sort. Later another member tested R1a1; again it was the same sub-group – but the two signatures just did not match. This meant that at best only one of these two could be from the Old Chiefs and we had no way of telling. Some time later, another R1a1 turned up. Again it was the same subset and again he did not match with either of the others. So now we had three candidate signatures for the original chiefly line!

Sir William Fraser was particularly mocking of the Clan Allan Grants – the Grants of Auchernack (properly and anciently Achachearnach). In our genealogies, and in their own lore, they are stated to be descendants of Allan – a brother of Sir Lawrence Grant – who was born around the year 1210. Instead Fraser claimed that these were merely local Abernethy peasants who had at some unspecified stage adopted the name Grant for their own safety or their own gain. Fraser’s story made no sense – but that had not stopped him elsewhere!

In the spring of 2008 a senior representative of the Clan Allan joined the project. He had a known and unbroken pedigree stretching back to the middle 1600s and….. he tested R1a1! Again this was the same subset of R1a1 which would be expected if the old genealogies were true. So given that the family lore exactly matches the science, we may be quite certain that this signature does indeed represent the ancient chiefly line.

And of the others? One of the other R1a1s turned out to be a very clear match with our standard and hence we may be confident that he too is descended also from the Viking Chiefs It is curious that all our R1a1 signatures come from the same ethnic subgroup and from this we should conclude that in the other samples we have the descendants of family servants/retainers who will have been with Olaf Hemingsson and his ancestors over many generations – all the way back to Denmark in 850 AD!

The Stewart Signature
The old Seannachies being vindicated, we now needed to see whether the Chiefly line signature would demonstrate the veracity of the claim about Andrew Stewart. We had tried to look into this before, but failed to find any criterion signature to compare with. A fresh search on the internet revealed two quite separate benchmark examples through the Stewarts of Balquidder. They had entirely separate pedigrees, linking into the line of the High Stewards of Scotland at quite separate points – but their DNA matched 37/37 so there could be no doubt that this was the true DNA signature.

Somewhat bizarrely the three members who looked somewhat doubtful members of the chiefly line matched this Stewart signature without any possible room for doubt. But precisely because there had been some doubt as to whether this group belonged to the Chiefly line, there was now some doubt as to whether the chiefly line really was Stewart! From the historical point of view the story was complicated by the fact that for many years, the Lords of Kincardine (between Abernethy and Rothiemurchus) were Stewarts – so it was at least logically possible that the members who showed the Royal Stewart signature could be the result of some unrecorded extra-marital event between the two families!! We cast around to see what explanations we might come up with, but had no convincing result.

Statistics to the Rescue
Family Tree DNA kindly provided the statistical analysis: 40%. In other words if you took ten examples at random where the proposed common ancestor dated back to c1260, then in 4 out of 10 cases it would prove to be correct. This is not the overwhelming incontrovertible proof we might have wished for, but it is entirely consistent – there is no basis for denying it. (Bear in mind the 60% score for the Lurg line which we KNOW to be correct).

The conclusion we draw is that the outsiders descend from a junior son of Andrew Stewart, while the chiefly line then descends from Patrick Beg mac Mauld, the heir – as told in the old genealogies.

Summary:
The Monymusk Text and others are consistent in saying that the original Grant Chiefs were Viking.
The DNA evidence proves that this is true.

The Monymusk Text says that when the Viking line died out it was Andrew Stewart who married the heiress.
The DNA evidence is consistent with this.

Postscript
Of course all of the above accounts for only a small proportion of all Grants. The vast majority are the ordinary clansmen whose ancestors adopted the surname in the late 1400s. We have one participant whose male line ancestors were in Scotland long before even the Picts arrived!