If you can trace a Mann to Caithness then you've got a probable.dbackjon wrote:CID1990 wrote:
You may well be- but be wary of both the DNA projects (they cant place you in specific clans) and be especially wary of these clan yahoos - the North American Clan Gunn Society and the DNA folks all want your money... some will take more than others
DNA is going to show a number of things, all of which WAY predate the medieval Scottish clan system. Plus, there is going to be all kinds of background noise from the DNA of your other ancestors.
Clan Gunn is a unique clan... it was the product of old Pictish tribes in the Caithness area that interbred with Viking raiders - the name Gunn is actually from the Norse "Gunnar"
If you went back and took the DNA of an actual chieftain of the clan in its heyday, you would find an admixture of Scandinavian and old OLD Breton. The problem is that you'll find that mixture all over the UK, not just in Clan Gunn. It is very prevalent there.
The most reliable way to trace clan ancestry is to actually delve into your family tree and ignore the DNA stuff. It is a distraction and these DNA companies make some very spurious claims to get your money. It is also more interesting because you discover real, actual people that can take you off in all kinds of genealogical directions.
But anybody who tells you a DNA test places you squarely in this clan or that clan is full of it.
BTW- many Gunns in the US trace their lineage to Thomas Gunn I. He was in the Petersburg VA area around the late 1600s early 1700s. His grandson, Starling, was a fusilier in the Continental Army under Nathaniel Greene and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. I'm directly descended from him. If you can find one link to the US Gunns in your family tree, there are even odds you share this history.
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Good to know. We can directly trace back to John Mann, born in Ulster in 1747, with a probable link to other Manns (records are a little sketchy before him) born in the Caithness area of Scotland. John Mann emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1760's and was a PVT. & Fifer in Capt. Wilson Company in the Pennsylvania Continental Line.
The problem with Clan Gunn and its associated septs is the Gunns ceased to be a landed clan in the mid-1600s after their feud with the Keiths. Gunns pretty much fanned out after that, and you can find them all over the world in short order in the 1600s, usually working in the service of other royalties or governments as mercenaries. A few of them were known to have immigrated to the Netherlands as soldiers.
The Ulster Plantation was almost exclusively lowland Scots, and many people will tell you that the Gunns were a highland clan - but the demise of the Gunns as a landed clan coincided with the establishment of the plantation in Ulster, so it makes total sense that some of them would have gone there looking for a livelihood.
We don't have anything definitive, but it is supposed that Thomas Gunn I came to VA from England, rather than Ulster. Pretty much everyone else in my family came from Ulster, though.
