I hope this site will be of interest not only to my fellow kinsmen but to anyone tracing Scots-Irish and Ulster-Scots roots in Ulster. My research has been carried out through the internet, PRONI in Belfast and local libraries, and through correspondence with many fellow McCorkell researchers and others with an interest in the genealogy and local history of the north of Ireland. They have all helped to make this site possible.
Everything here comes from records I have consulted or from sources I have read, listed at the foot of each page. I am sure there are mistakes, and some of my assumptions about particular branches may turn out to be wrong. Where readers point out errors I will gladly correct them and acknowledge their help.
The site is named for the Foyle because the family lived almost entirely along it and its rivers: Inishowen and the Laggan in Donegal, the city and Liberties of Londonderry, and the Strabane side of Tyrone. Its sources reach to Scotland, the USA, Canada and Australia. I use the spelling McCorkell, as most Donegal families have written it for the past 200 years, but McCorkle, MacCorkle, McCorkill, McCorkhill and the many other spellings in the records are all the same name.
Humble stock
The McCorkells of Donegal were neither princes nor earls nor landed gentry. They were tenant farmers and tradesmen for the most part, perhaps a few merchants: hard-working but in no way illustrious. Like so many of their contemporaries they lived and died with no stone to mark their passing. Here and there a few records survive from their first two hundred years in Ireland, enough perhaps to sketch an outline of the family. Having lived all my life in the north-west of Ireland, within a few miles of those earliest settlers, I feel well placed to tell their story, and through it the story of the people who became known as the Planters.
Their story did not begin in Donegal, nor will it end there. At the time of writing (2015) fewer than ten McCorkell families still live in the county. Six are listed in the Irish telephone directory, and four of those appear to live on the same townlands their ancestors farmed over 300 years ago. In the 1901 census there were more than 20 McCorkell families in Donegal, 84 people in all: 59 Presbyterian, 18 Church of Ireland and 7 Roman Catholic.
The most serious cause of their decline was partition in 1922, which cut Donegal, and Inishowen especially, off from its natural hinterland in Derry. Although there was little violence aimed at the Protestant minority in the county at the time, many felt alienated in the new Free State, and the farming economy many depended on declined steadily in the years that followed. A map of the 2006 Irish census still shows a healthy Protestant minority in the Laggan, where the first Planters settled 400 years ago.
From Viking glory?
McCorkell is usually described as a Scottish Highland name, but its roots are Scandinavian. It means "son of Thorketill", a Norse personal name usually translated as "Thor's cauldron". The Gaelic forms are Torcall and Torquil, and the surname forms include MacCorkell, Corkill and Corkhill.1 Before surnames were fixed it was simply a given name, which matters, as we shall see. The Scots did not sound the "Th" of Thorketill, and the "C" of Mac came to be pronounced as part of the name.
The name appears in several places, and various clans have been claimed as its home. I take them in turn. The phrase "From Viking Glory" I owe to Louis McCorkle's book of that name, an early study of the family.
The Isle of Man
The name has long been established on the Isle of Man, centre of the Norse Kingdom of Man and the Isles, which once ruled the Western Isles and parts of the Scottish mainland. Donald MacCorkyll was rector of the church of St Mary of Balylagh in 1408, and in 1430 a Thomas McCorkill, also written MacCorkyll, sat in the Tynwald. Corkill remains one of the most common Manx surnames, the "Mc" having been dropped in the last 200 years.
Torquil the Dane and the McCorquodales
McCorquodale family tradition holds that its lands on Loch Awe in Argyll were granted to its founder Torquil by Kenneth MacAlpin, for recovering the head of King Alpin from the Picts after a battle on the banks of the Carron. The McCorquodale barons held lands west of Loch Awe from the 15th century, centred at Phantelane, with their seat on Eilean-a-Bharain in Loch Tromlee. The seal of Duncan McCorquodale of Phantelane in 1556 reads "S. Duncan mak Corkatill", almost a cross between the two names.3 The McCorquodales are recognised by the Lord Lyon but have been without a chief since the last baron died in the 1700s.
I once believed McCorkell was a shortened form of McCorquodale. The Y-DNA now says otherwise: tested McCorquodales belong to a completely different paternal lineage from the McCorkells (see Chapter VI). The names share a root, but not a family.
Mac Torcaill in Ireland
The name also existed in Ireland before the Plantation in its Gaelic form, Mac Torcaill, "son of Torcall". The last Norse king of Dublin, Ascall mac Ragnaill of the Meic Torcaill dynasty, died in 1171.2 Patrick Woulfe, in Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall (1923), lists the Irish forms and their anglicised versions, but concludes that Irish families with the surname are probably of Scottish origin. The McCorkells of Donegal almost certainly came from Scotland in the 1600s.
Clan Gunn
Clan Gunn claims descent from Olaf the Black, Norse king of Man and the Isles, whose son Gunni came to Caithness late in the twelfth century. The Gunns were in almost constant conflict with their neighbours, especially the Keiths and the Mackays, and MacCorkill has long been listed as a sept of the clan. One account of Gunn history credits the MacCorkills with killing many of Clan Mackay in their feuds, placing them in the border country of Strathy and Strath Halladale.
A record of 1618 shows the name still with the Gunns. James Browne, drawing on the older history of the earls of Sutherland, tells how Sir Donald Mackay seized one of the clan at Badenloch:
He went to Badin-loch, and there apprehended William M'Corkill, one of the clan Gun, and carried him along with him towards Strathnaver… but M'Corkill escaped while his keepers were asleep, and went to Dunrobin.James Browne, A History of the Highlands and of the Highland Clans, vol. 1 (1835)
A William MacCorkell also brought a case against the Earl of Caithness for wrongful imprisonment in 1613–16.
The MacLeods of Lewis
The MacLeods of Lewis were known as Siol Thorcaill, "the seed of Torquil", and they too claimed descent from Olaf the Black. After the break-up of the Lordship of the Isles in the 1400s, clans like the MacLeods of Lewis held great power along the western seaboard. They paid little attention to laws made in Edinburgh, and their fighting prowess made them sought-after mercenaries in Ireland, as we will see in the next chapter.
Torkill as a given name
A bond of 1556, in which the MacIntyres pledged allegiance to the Campbells of Glenorchy, shows how easily the name passed between families. Among the signatories are "Gillecrist M'Corkill V Inteir" and "Johne M'Corkill V. Ynteir", which a history of the MacIntyres interprets as Gillecrist and John, sons of Torkill MacIntyre. Here M'Corkill is simply "son of Torkill". It is easy to see how the name could become a surname in several parts of the Highlands without any link between the families who carried it.
The Y-DNA bears this out. The McCorquodales and the Manx Corkills carry haplogroup I, while the McCorkells belong to an entirely different branch, R-M269, within a cluster whose other surnames are Lowland and Border Scots. Several unrelated families took their name from a man called Torquil. Ours, it seems, was one of them.
The McCorkells in the Lowlands
By the mid-1500s the clan system was in decline, and many Highlanders had moved south to the Lowlands as tenants on small holdings. I once thought the McCorkells made that journey too, perhaps between 1550 and 1600. The records now suggest they were in the Lowlands earlier than that. The name is uncommon in Scottish records of the period, and the entries I have found centre on Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Dunbartonshire and Edinburgh:
| Year | Record |
|---|---|
| 1528 | Mitchell Maccorkill of Kilmarnock, also written Michell McKarkill, assigned lands at Myltoune (perhaps Milltown), Ayrshire. Register of the Monastery of Cambuskenneth. |
| 1613–16 | William MacCorkell against the Earl of Caithness, for wrongful imprisonment. Register of the Privy Council of Scotland. |
| 1614 | John MacCorkill assists Eogan Mac Suibhne, minister of Duirinish, Isle of Skye, in Minginish and Bracadale. |
| 1620 | Jonatt M'Korkell fined 13 shillings. Dumbarton Kirk Session. |
| 1622 | John M'Korkill of Middle Ardincaple signs a charter for the Duke of Lennox, who held 4,000 acres in the Laggan. Ardincaple, near Rhu on the Firth of Clyde, was the McAulay stronghold, and Sir Aulay McAulay was Lennox's agent in Donegal. |
| 1639–51 | Jonet, Archibald and Catrein, children of John McCorkill (or McCorkedill) and Isabel Brewster, baptised at Kenmore, Perthshire, at the head of Loch Tay. |
| 1656 | Robert M'Carkell marries Bessie Craufurd, North Leith, 8 July. |
| 1666 | Archibald MacCorkill of West Cochnoch, parish of West (Old) Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, leaves a will. His master was Robert Hamilton of Barns. |
| 1675–1711 | McCorkills in the Highlands: Thomas at Kilmorack in 1675, and several families at Inverness between 1702 and 1711. In Glasgow, John McKorkel is baptised at the High Church in 1678, and William McCorkell and Agnes Ferguson have children there from 1708. |
| 1694–97 | Matthew McCorkill, blacksmith, has Isabell (1694) and Robert (1697) christened at Ochiltree, Ayrshire. |
| 1695 | Allan M'Korkell, workman, pays 6 shillings poll tax, Kilmacolm parish, Renfrewshire. |
The Kilmarnock record of 1528 is the key one. It places the name in Ayrshire a full century before the Plantation, in the same county the Cunninghams of Glengarnock would draw their Donegal tenants from.
By 1600, like almost all Lowland Scots, the family would have been Protestant, and probably Presbyterian. It was from this Lowland branch, I believe, that the first McCorkells came to Donegal, sometime between 1620 and 1630. Further migrations followed throughout the century, including the large one of the 1690s, but I believe most if not all Ulster McCorkells descend from those who settled in Donegal and Derry in the 1620s.
The 1841 census of Scotland
The 1841 census, the first in Scotland to survive in full, shows how the name had spread by then: 80 people in about ten family groups, with as many again living alone or in shared lodgings. None were in the Highlands or Islands. All but one family lived in the industrial districts of greater Glasgow and Edinburgh. How many were descended from Highlanders driven south by the Clearances we cannot tell.
Most striking is that one in four of these McCorkells, 20 people, had been born in Ireland, and they tended to live in parishes where Scottish-born McCorkells also lived, suggesting family ties. This census predates the Famine migration of 1847 by six years.
Sources
- George Calder, A Gaelic Grammar (1923), p. 159.
- Ascall mac Ragnaill, Wikipedia.
- Iain Moncreiffe, The Highland Clans (1984).
- Patrick Woulfe, Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames (1923).
- James Browne, A History of the Highlands and of the Highland Clans, vol. 1 (1835), drawing on Sir Robert Gordon, A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland.
- Louis McCorkle, From Viking Glory.
- Register of the Monastery of Cambuskenneth; Register of the Privy Council of Scotland; Dumbarton Kirk Session records.