The Pennsylvania Cowans

Same Name.

The genealogical problems created because people have the same or similar names are too numerous to count. I have heard that if you find ten online family trees and one of them has a different person, that's the one that may be correct. That person didn't just copy another person's "research."

I recently had to sort through 5 counties in England to determine the correct woman to put into my tree. It's hard work. I even made a spreadsheet, which I avoid as much as I possible. I hate them, but they work well when sorting out people.

This brings me to another example.

In 1971, John Kerr Fleming wrote a book entitled The Cowans from County Down. He states that four brothers, Hugh, David, John, and William Cowan, immigrated to the United States from Ulster around 1720. According to Fleming, they were Ulster Scots, or Scottish people who had settled in Ulster Province in Ireland and had lived there for several generations before immigrating. The four brothers lived near each other in Pennsylvania before their descendants moved around the country.

 Fleming includes transcribed documents in his work, and traces the family history forward to the time of publication. The Cowans from County Down is very often cited in many books about the area around Salisbury, North Carolina, where my Cowan ancestors lived.

Since 1971, our access to information has changed, and we also have the benefit of DNA to guide us in the right direction.

In 2012, Terry Cowan published A Cowan History: The Family of David Cowan (1665c. - 1730 of the Pequea Valley, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, His Antecedents and Descendants. In this book, Mr. Cowan presents another version of the Cowan story using new research and DNA analysis. He argues that Hugh Cowan may have come from Ulster, but David, John, and William were not his brothers (according to Y-DNA analysis) and most likely came from the Chirnside area of Scotland.  Like Mr. Fleming, Mr. Cowan cites many sources and documents to argue his point.

So what's a Cowan researcher to do?

Do your own research, of course!

Just because people have the same surname does not mean they are related.

Just because people with the same surname are living fairly near each other does not mean they are related.

You can always use family histories that you find as clues, but remember, they may not be correct. New documents may come to light. New technologies like DNA become available. 

While I tend to believe the updated research by Mr. Cowan, I plan to fully analyze both books and their sources, plus any additional sources I come across, to develop my own argument. 

It's okay to be different!