The Thomas Cameron yDNA Project

Which branch of the Cameron Clan did Thomas Cameron belong to?

When I was writing my family history book, I tried to find the parents of Thomas Cameron, my five-times great-grandfather, but was not able to learn anything definitive. His marriage record states that his parents were John Cameron and Mary Anne Fraser and that they were from Inverness, Scotland. No further information on these people has come up in documents.

John and Mary as well as Cameron and Fraser are very common names in Scotland, so finding the right ones has been a challenge.

Several family trees on Ancestry.com have linked Thomas to various John Camerons and Mary Anne Frasers. I am skeptical about the accuracy of any of these claims. It is important for people to do their own thorough research and not just copy what others have published.

Information posted on Ancestry for another Thomas Cameron, who was born in Ireland and fought in the American Revolution, claims that his parents were named John Cameron and Mary Anne Fraser. That other Thomas Cameron settled in Georgia, so this is inaccurate information.

Some claim that my ancestor Thomas Cameron had a sister in Canada as well, a Marie-Louise Cameron. There was a Marie-Louise Cameron living in Québec at the same time as Thomas, who married Theodore Kebel (or Göbel) of Germany, but I have not been able to link them as brother and sister. She came from Aberdeen, Scotland, died on 15 November 1835 and was buried on 29 June 1836 in Saint-Jerôme de Matane, at the age of seventy-two. That places her birth around 1764, about 24 years after the birth of Thomas. The place of her birth and her age make it feel unlikely to me that they would be siblings, although possibly they were half-siblings or 1st cousins.

Both Thomas Cameron and Marie-Louise Cameron were listed in the Tanguay genealogical dictionary of French-Canadian families. Thomas is listed as having been born in 1746, but this would have made him thirteen years old in 1759. It doesn’t seem likely that he would have been recruited as a soldier in 1757 at age eleven, or that he and Françoise had a child together in 1762 when he was just sixteen, so I am sure that this is a mistake, and he was born around 1740 or 1741.

Another inaccurate assumption has been made that Thomas was the son of John Cameron, the Fourth Lord of Glendessary (1715-1758). If this were true, Thomas would have been connected to Scottish aristocracy. The Fourth Lord of Glendessary was the great-great grandson of the Sixteenth Chief of the Cameron clan, named Allan Cameron, or Allan MacDonald Dubh. However, this claim holds no water because John Cameron, the Fourth Lord of Glendessary didn’t marry or have any children. After he died from his illness (he had been a sickly individual who couldn’t manage his own estate), his holdings were handed over to his cousin John Cameron of Dungallon. This person is also claimed to be the father of my ancestor Thomas Cameron, but John Cameron, Second of Dungallon, died without issue in 1743.

What is more likely is that Thomas was from a cadet branch of the Clan Cameron, and likely one without financial wealth, which would explain why he joined the army and left Scotland to find a better life elsewhere.

Attempting to solve the mystery through DNA

Thanks to my blog, a researcher has reached out to me to see if I would be interested in solving the mystery of Thomas’ parentage and wider family connections to Scotland. Of course, I said I was!

She has been working with a client who has DNA links to me. This client’s ancestor, Mary Christine Cameron (1746 – ?) lived in the Gaspé peninsula and was married to the Scottish trader William Smith, who was from Kilmarnock, Scotland. He established fisheries in the Gaspé in the late 1700s. Based on the location of the fisheries and the possibility that John Cameron was stationed at the fort at Douglastown, she believes Marie Christine Cameron was there, too, married William Smith in Gaspé, and produced a child, before he left and died in South Carolina in 1782.

Because of the DNA connection, this researcher is sure there’s a familial connection between Mary Christine and Thomas Cameron — they may even be brother and sister. There is also a strong familial connection through DNA with the Fraser family, in particular Alexander Fraser, born about 1729 in Inverness-shire, died 1820 in Quebec City and John Fraser of Inverness-shire, born in 1779, died in 1862 in Ontario. Alexander could possibly be an uncle of Thomas Cameron and John Fraser could be a cousin.

With these DNA connections, this researcher has pinpointed the origins of Thomas Cameron and his parents as Kirkhill and Kilmorack, both in Inverness-shire and just ten miles to the west of Inverness, south of Beauly in Scotland. Interestingly, this is historically Fraser Clan land, with Lord Lovat’s historical clan seat just 3 miles south of Beauly.

Having researched DNA strands with other Camerons, she has ruled out any familial connection with either the Glendessary, Lochiel, and McSorlie lines or clan leaders. She also believes the parentage of Thomas is questionable, in particular his father. Because of the lack of DNA connections to other Cameron haplogroups, it’s possible Thomas’s father was not a Cameron.

Cameron FTDNA project

To learn more about which haplogroup Thomas belongs to, we need a larger pool of DNA. FTDNA (Family Tree DNA) is a database where DNA links family trees more accurately than Ancestry.com’s DNA site. There is a Cameron yDNA project that’s run by Kim Taylor, a Canadian whose Cameron roots are firmly entrenched in the maritime. She has a few hundred Camerons who have tested at FTDNA and contributed to the project. There is very little if any participation from our Cameron line.

This project will accurately identify Thomas Cameron’s correct lineage through genetic genealogy. We would love to find male direct descendants of this ancestor who may have taken the Y-DNA test at FTDNA or who are willing to.

Why males? The Y chromosome is passed down from father to son remaining mostly unaltered across generations, except for small traceable changes in DNA. By tracking these changes, you can construct a family tree of humankind where all male lineages trace back to a common ancestor who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. The more descendants of a common ancestor are Y-DNA tested, the more accurate the information becomes. As more people test, the history of the genetic lineage will be defined.

If you are a direct male descendant of Thomas Cameron or of his sons, Jean-Baptiste (1762-1841, married Rosalie Roy in 1788), Antoine (1776-1846, married Marie-Louise Bourg in 1797), and Augustin (1777-1858, married Angelique Molleur in 1802) — or know one who is — please reach out to me. I can put you in touch with the researcher working on this project or have her reach out to you.

Hopefully, we can finally identify the male lineage of Thomas Cameron’s father and correct the misinformation shared by thousands.

Links:
https://www.ancestry.com/c/dna-learning-hub/y-dna
https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna