‘It’s like a puzzle’
Hobby genealogist assists others in Gaelic cultural practice of family tree research
Vince MacNeil has always been interested in genealogy.
“It’s a family tradition. My mother’s grandfather was a noted genealogist, Gaelic speaker, and storyteller. He would have charts on the walls and he knew who people were, and people would come to him and ask him about their ancestry.”
MacNeil grew up in New Waterford, Cape Breton, hearing stories that his great-grandfather, Francis Hector MacNeil, had told and his mother had heard. Like the one about how his mother’s grandfather had a table made from the legs of Queen Victoria’s bed, passed down in his family since the 1850s.
“I heard that story growing up and we had a family reunion and I inquired about them. I found out one of my mother’s cousins had them, and he gave them to me, because of my interest," he says.
PASSION FOR GENEALOGY
Like his great-grandfather, MacNeil knows who people are. People come to him to ask about their ancestry. He has charts on his computer. He can give any MacNeil in Nova Scotia (or any descended from the MacNeils) their ancestry, sometimes instantly.
“It’s a cultural practice that’s in my own family,” says MacNeil, currently a school principal with the Halifax Regional Centre for Education. “It’s a hobby. I’m not a professional. But I have done a master's thesis, a study of Gaelic Language and Culture in Cape Breton’s Gaidhealtachd (Cape Breton’s Barra Gaelic speaking area), so I know how to find things in archives.”
MacNeil started to look into his own family history over 20 years ago. Both of his parents are MacNeils.
“It’s not uncommon in Cape Breton,” he says. “MacNeil is a very common name.”
It’s fitting that he's the genealogist for Clan MacNeil in Canada, and the association’s newly-minted president. Upon looking into his own ancestry, MacNeil discovered all kinds of connections to other people in the community.
“Through that, I started researching all of the MacNeils in Nova Scotia," he says.
"I started with early records, census returns, oral history accounts. I love doing archival research. I worked from the past and moved forward in time and developed a database.”
A database that now includes about 125,000 people, though not strictly MacNeils, since he’s researched all his family lines. To manage such a large database and help others with their ancestry, MacNeil spends time “just about every day” working on genealogical matters.
MacNeil considers it an intellectual pursuit.
“It’s problem-solving. People lived and they left records, and they owned land, and they left wills, and there’s vital statistics. So I’m putting together a family story.”
His role with Clan MacNeil in Canada is to assist people with their family tree research. People will reach out to him either through the Facebook groups he runs or the Clan MacNeil in Canada website.
“I can send them an ancestral chart and I can give them not just their paternal MacNeil line, I can give them almost all of their ancestry,” he says.
But he also has a specialty.
“I really specialize in Barra families. Not all MacNeils are MacNeils of Barra. Barra is an island off the coast of Scotland," he explains.
"That’s where the seat of clan MacNeil is and the castle is there. Any family, no matter where they have gone in the world, that have connections to Barra, I can give them their ancestry. I have helped people in New Zealand and Australia, even people who live in Barra, with their ancestry.”
He says there are MacNeils all over the world who are part of these Facebook groups.
“It’s a great way to exchange information, and I learn from them as well, about their families, says MacNeil. “I’m connected to most of the Barra families in some way.”
FACT VERSUS FICTION
MacNeil is also involved in the MacNeil DNA project, a Y-DNA project looking at paternal ancestry.
Y-DNA is passed from father to son, so it is useful for surname studies.
“The oral history of the Clan MacNeils of Barra is that we descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, who is an Irish King,” says MacNeil. “We know through DNA testing that we do not, in fact, descend from Niall of the Nine Hostages. We’re probably more of a Norse-based, Scandanavian-based clan originally. The MacNeils actually lived like the Vikings did. The DNA work is helping to rewrite the history of the clan.”
MacNeil finds it fascinating to uncover archival type things.
“I find old articles in old newspapers that were saved by someone and then it ends up at the archives and I can learn from that. I can share that information with people.”
One way he does so is through the Clan MacNeil in Canada newsletter, for which he’s been the editor for nearly 20 years.
“I have been able to locate some of my own great-grandfather’s things, stories he wrote down," he says.
"He’d be down in Boston and he would sketch out a little (family) tree for somebody on an envelope and they save that, and it will get passed down and someone will send that to me. So I have all these artifacts that are tied to my own family history.”
While that's precious personally, it also helps to form the puzzle of the clan's genealogy as a whole.
“It’s like a puzzle, and they left clues, and it’s fascinating to find those clues and put these things together using not only archival and oral histories but also DNA to write a history of a people," he says.
MacNeil has even been able to help find adopted people’s parents.
“DNA kits are accurate to the point people are finding out who their biological parents are. Someone might contact me because they have been adopted and have a MacNeil match," he said.
"If they share their results with me, I can look at the matches and I figure out they’re from Cape Breton and I can see they were getting matches to a particular community, and sometimes I can pinpoint family groups they may belong to. I can see their contacts and narrow it down. I’ve figured out who people’s parents are, without even meeting them."
BUILDING LINKS
“To research your family tree is a Gaelic cultural practice,” says MacNeil. “To try to connect yourself to people, and to try to have a sense of who they are in the community."
Tracing the steps of ancestors within historical context is particularly interesting, he says.
“You can position yourself within historical events, you discover that your ancestors were there,” he says. “I can link myself to the Jamestown Virginia colony, link myself to the arrival of the first Acadians in Nova Scotia, I can link myself to the wave of emigrants from Scotland to Nova Scotia, the arrival of the Irish, the English soldiers who were here. You can link yourself to all kinds of historical events and it brings them to life for you.”
MacNeil plans to continue to build on his genealogical research.
“I’m always adding in information. I get information from obituaries, from people contacting me.”
For him, it’s a never-ending process. “We don’t really know, necessarily, who we are. You might look into your ancestry and you find out you have a Dutch ancestor, Spanish or Mi’kmaw or African-Nova Scotian ancestor, and you might not know that you have this in your past. It can be quite fascinating to make those discoveries.”
MACNEIL’S ADVICE FOR RESEARCHING ANCESTRY
• Start by contacting relatives and finding out what they might know.
• Search vital statistics, available online. There are marriages, deaths, and births recorded. There are census returns as far back as 1921. “You need to get yourself back in time to a certain point. Go back to your grandparents or great grandparents, then start doing your own research.”
• Don’t blindly accept the work you might see somewhere like Ancestry. ca. “There’s a lot of mistakes on there. Anybody could put a (family) tree on Ancestry and sometimes they’re very inaccurate. People have made really incorrect links, and they copy each other, and you can get a mistake that’s replicated repeatedly. You have to know what you are looking at and do some actual research,” says MacNeil.
• Once you have exhausted the vital statistics, look for oral history accounts that have been preserved and made their way to archives like the Beaton Institute in Cape Breton.
• Find others tracking the same family tree and compare notes. “There’s such an interest in researching your family tree in North America, the farther you go back in time usually someone else is looking into that same family that you are. Find them on message boards or Facebook groups. Be sure to check for proof.”
• Parrish records and land records through the Registry of Deeds may uncover helpful information.
• DNA kits can be very helpful, you’ll get very accurate matches suggesting relationships, especially in the first number of generations. MacNeil says these companies are getting better at predicting ethnicity.
• Use a computer program like one called Legacy, where you can create a database and access ancestral charts instantly.