Updated 28-Jun-2024
Memoir Preface
This is an extended essay. It is not complete, the work is ongoing in fits and starts. It contains three parts.
- The first part is a genealogy and genetic forensics in searching for my male ancestral line. It centers on our emigrant ancestor John McNeill (1680-1765) who emigrated to the American colonies in 1722 and his father Daniel McNeill (1630-1684) who was born and died in Coleraine, Ulster, Northern Ireland.
- The second part is a personal memoir from the circumstances around my birth and personal history, up until the birth of my son Benjamin.
- The third part takes up the issue of evolution, human groups, stories and praxis in general, our practical activity that has resulted from and results in a lineage. It is meant to indicate the various ways of how a past and a present can be understood, in a truthful way.
Dedication
> To my emigrant ancestor
> Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather John McNeill
> - (1680-1765)
Introduction
> I am of a healthy long lived race,
> and our minds improve with age.
> - William Butler Yeats
Being an old race, an early ancestor of the McNeill was asked by Noah to accompany him on his ark. Our ancestor replied: "Thank ye, but The McNeill has a boat of his own".
Indeed, the McNeill has a tall tale of his own as well, though not the one we may have thought he had.
Part I
- Origins and Descendants, names, places, and peoples
- Ancestral Lands, genetic genealogy and history
- Interlude: We have a Match - Open letter re: matching on Y-DNA markers
Part II
Part III
- Families and Livelihood, the Seven Kingdoms to Ulster
- Ulster Scots, history of the Ulster Plantations
- Interlude: Antifragility and Scottish Clan Mottos
Part IV
- America, descent in a New Land - (incomplete)
- Asia, migration in the 21st century - (not available yet)
- Return to the ancestral - (not available yet)
- Postscript: Language, ancient and modern - (not available yet)