In May 2007, I had my Y-DNA tested by Family Tree DNA. Only males have the Y chromosome and every male inherits their Y chromosome from their father, thus it is passed down from father to son across the generations. It was my hope that I would find out more about my Perry paternal line and perhaps be able to trace the Perry’s back beyond the earliest ancestor I had found, my GGGG-Grandfather Hugh Perry, Sr. (1765-1840) who died in Fairfield District, South Carolina. Other than the will he left, I have not been able to find out anything more about Hugh Perry such as where he was born or the names of his parents.

In June 2007, Family Tree DNA notified me that were several people who matched the first 12 Y-DNA markers perfectly - there were a couple of Perry’s, two Browns, an Evans, a Morrison, a Williams, and a Pyatt. Perfect matches for the first 25 markers narrowed it down to one Perry, two Browns, a Williams, and a Pyatt. It should not have been a surprise to me that the transfer of surnames doesn’t always follow the Y chromosome. Mix-ups sometimes happen due primarily to adoptions and illegitimate births down through the generations. One of the mister Browns tried to convince me via e-mail that I must be a Brown and not a Perry. Needless to say, I was more than a little dubious. I made contact with the one Perry who had matched perfectly for 25 markers, William Hugh Perry, and found out a little about his family. It turns out that his paternal ancestors were Presbyterians from Creggan Parish in County Armagh in Northern Ireland (the province of Ulster). These Scottish Presbyterians in Northern Ireland were also known as Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots. My own family tradition has it that my Perrys were also Scots-Irish from Ireland. I also learned that the names of the males in his paternal line were very much the same as the names in my paternal line including George, Joseph, William, and Hugh. Too much of a coincidence since names did typically run in Scots-Irish families. Here is a link to a copy of the e-mail exchange between me and William Hugh Perry.

I did more research online into Creggan Parish and found that the Creggan Historical Society publishes a journal about once every two years. One of the journals (No. 10 2001/2002) had an article about the first Presbyterians to settle in Creggan Parish so I sent off to Ireland to get a copy. The article was entitled “The Creggan Presbyterian Congregation” by Kevin McMahon and it was about the first Presbyterian congregation to settle in Creggan Parish. They constructed a meeting house in the township of Freeduff around 1740. In October of 1743, the meeting house was burned down, purportedly by a few Catholics (Papists as they were called) from the area, and statements were taken from several members of the congregation including a Joseph Peery, who was the custodian of the meeting house, and his wife Mary. The article also stated that most of the members of this first congregation had moved to Creggan from the town of Lecale in County Down.

Based on my Y-DNA test results, Family Tree DNA gives an indication of the recent geographic origins of my paternal line as follows:

25 Marker Y-DNA Matches

Exact Matches

Country (Number of Entries) Your Matches

Ireland (5048)                            2

One Step Mutations

Country (Number of Entries) Your Matches

Scotland (4557)                         1

3 Step Mutations

Country (Number of Entries) Your Matches

England (10151)                        1

This indicates the possible migration of my Perry ancestors from England to Scotland and then to Ireland (Northern Ireland). This matches well with one history of the Perry family indicating that Perry is a Norman surname and the first Perry in England accompanied William the Conqueror of Normandy when he invaded England in 1066 AD and was granted lands in Hampshire. He is recorded in the Norman Domesday Book of 1086 AD as Norman Perree in Hampshire. It is likely that some of the English Perrys moved to the border country in the north of England and the southern lowlands of Scotland in the centuries that followed. Most lowland Scottish borderers became Presbyterians after the Protestant Scottish Reformation lead by John Knox in Scotland in the 1500s. It was these lowland Scottish Presbyterians who moved by the thousands to Northern Ireland in the 1600s and then on to America in the 1700s (see Scots-Irish).