Y-DNA Marker Results Kit #134877
Michael Bowe, b. 1801, Callan, Kilkenny, Ireland.
"Our Michael was born in Callan [supposed] in 1801 and married Margaret Walsh of Kill, Co. Waterford, and died 31 Aug 1885 at his residence in Ballybricken, in Waterford City. He had 5 sons and 2 daughters. One of those was Daniel and he married Elizabeth Caulfield and they had 11 children. Michael, Daniel, and Paddy reoccur in every succeeding generation. My father Nicholas married Margaret Quinlan and they had 17 children of whom I am the second last."
Research Notes
Of course we have no explanation in any detail for how a male genetically from the Niall of the Nine Hostages group ended up with the Bowe surname in Kilkenny, but the book Modern Ireland 1600-1972 by RF Foster may offer a clue on page 5:
O'Neill's progress south in January 1600 was made at a time when travel for its own sake was rare and troublesome, even in the notoriously mobile society of the Gaelic lordships. He came down through Westmeath in the center of the island, ***turning aside to discipline the O'Carroll lands for disloyalty***; by February he was in Munster with the Earl of Desmond, a member of the old Norman Fitzgerald family, now thoroughly Hibernicized. Passing by the lands of the Earl of Ormond (Hiberno-Norman also, but loyal to the Crown), O'Neill burned part of Kilkenny town: his sojourn in Cork saw further punitive expeditions...
No doubt he came through with a large entourage, and while we don't like to think of these things, we know that invasions never occur without some “spoils of war”. It's possible that this “planted” the Niall of the Nine Hostages Y-chromosome in a local Bowe female who then raised a son–genetically from the North–among the Irish Bowe from southern Ireland. Since that Irish Bowe group is now known to match the O'Carroll's of Ely Carroll, this paternal Bowe line could have been in Ely Carroll country around 1600, or already in Kilkenny then. Just a theory.
This Bowe has been said to relate to Tommy Bowe the athlete and Patrick Bowe the landscape architect. It was published in a book by him that Patrick Bowe's family came to Ireland during Elizabethan times. Further research and DNA study is needed to substantiate and clarify these connections. If, in fact, these three are related, then a non-paternal event between a distant cousin of Niall of the Nine Hostages and a Bowe woman from this Elizabethan line would have occurred, and there will be an as yet unknown Bowe Y chromosome in Ireland representing this Elizabethan line.