Is the name McGowan, Irish or Scottish and how could I go about looking up my ancestors?
479182
MacGowen means 'Son of the smith' and is actually two speerate clans , an irish and a scottish one. THe webpage below gives some information
451959
try\nhttp://www.familyresearcher.net/BritishResearch/Welcome.html
1033799
Here is what I found:\nI searched for Cassidy, since it seems a more likely common spelling.\n\nFrom an Irish surname which was derived from Ó Caiside meaning "descendent of Caiside". Caiside is a first name meaning "curly haired" from Gaelic cas.
679855
The only way is to do the footwork. If your father was referring to British royalty and you are keen to trace your family in the UK, you will need to look at your family's birth, marriage and death certificates. If your Dad has his birth certificate it will show your grandparents' names. You can then trace back to their certificates and discover your great grandparents' names until they started in 1837. From that information, you should be able to discover dates and places and compare them to censuses which will give you more information. Finally, the oldest data around is contained in parish registers. It will take some doing to find out, but is possible.\n\nA lot of this information has been made available on-line.\n\nIf your ancestors were royal doctors, it is also likely that they will appear in history books and biographies - so it is worth rooting around your second hand bookshops and library too.\n\nThe BBC has a brilliant website that will help anyone interested in finding out about their British ancestory. See below . . .
488812
Ah Darren, I have already suspected your Scottish roots, but now I know you're a Celtic fan.\n\nJock Stein, is this the answer you're looking for?
1088299
ancestry.com is a good one
284062
The links listed above are good but are pay services, as well as geneology.com. However, if you have all your info ready you can sign up for a 2 week free trial and get most all of your work done in that time...especially since you are not going back that far.\n\nI traced my fathers side back to the late 15th century this way. Real neat stuff but also very addictive so be careful. Also easy to get lead in a bad direction so double and triple check all your results before moving to the next generation.\n\nAlso, a decent free site is www.rootsweb.com. \n\nNewsgroups are an excellent resource as well but too complicated to explain here. Feel free to email me if you need help getting started.
222873
Go to www.ancestry.com
686891
FamilySearch.org, the genealogy website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (A.K.A. the Mormons)\nhttp://www.familysearch.org/\n\nthe U.S. GenWeb Project\nhttp://www.usgenweb.org/\nand the World GenWeb Project\nhttp://www.worldgenweb.org/\n\nRootsWeb.com (free, sponsored by Ancestry.com)\nhttp://www.rootsweb.com\n\nthe genealogy message boards at Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com are free:\nhttp://boards.ancestry.com/\nhttp://genforum.genealogy.com/\n\nCyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet\nhttp://www.cyndislist.com/\n\nYou can try the Yahoo Groups for subject GENEALOGY (see URL below) - there are currently 2,834 Groups tagged as "Genealogy"; some Groups are specific to a surname or location or ethnicity, while others are "open non-specific"; many Group members are willing to do free look-ups and help with genealogy questions. \nhttp://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=genealogy&submit=Search
863409
"Where did his ancestors come from?" would have been a better way of asking it. I believe he is of Irish decent.
723758
Where is your family from? If they were Scottish, scotlandspeople.gov.uk can let you search names in their database of birth, death and marriage certificates back to 1855, but then you have to pay to view those certificates. If they were English, you can look them up in the 1901 census at www.pro.gov.uk. Again, you can get free search results but then pay to view an individual entry. If they're not British, I cannot help.
170250
check out www.ancestry.com
807335
www.ancestry.com - much of the site is free but you have to pay for many features\n\nhttp://www.rootsweb.com/ - this is one of the oldest and best genealogy sites and everything on it is free\n\nhttp://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/default.aspx - this site has profiles of surnames\n\nhttp://wc.rootsweb.com/ - you will find family trees on this site and you may find that some of your relatives are there.\n\nGenealogy is so much fun - I hope you have a lot of success!\n\ns
314757
Try this, you'll find the answer for sure:\nhttp://www.genealogytoday.com/surname/finder.mv?Surname=Guynes
332078
In americian tradition, you're scottish american for 4 generations. In scottish tradition you are ALWAYS a son of the clan and therefore scottish. \n\nTruth is, it's mostly up to you how 'gaelic' you are and how much you embrace your family shared hertiages.\n\nNote: Technically, you were an 'american' as soon as you spent 7 years here, conversly
897999
Try www.houseofnames.com or www.ancestry.com
170798
http://www.last-names.net/ easy enough eh? looks promising so good luck... ^___~