McKown family origins
John McKown (1722-1809)
The progenitor of all the McKown family of McKownville, John McKown
is known from his original gravestone, found in
1973 making up part of the cellar floor of a house near the
Prospect Hill Cemetery. It was said then that the stone was being
taken for preservation, but in 1996 it was reported as found broken
and abandoned, and at some unknown time after that it and two
others were rescued
by the Guilderland Water Department; its present whereabouts stored
in the facility of the Water Department was (re)discovered and
images taken in 2021 by Bill Donato.
Unlike his descendants, John McKown was not given an inscription or
replacement stone at Prospect Hill. The original stone had the
inscription: "John McKown, who departed this life June 15, 1809,
aged 87 years and 25 days". So (if accurate) he was born May
21st, 1722, or about that date.
John McKown is mentioned in a biographical sketch of
his great-great-grandson William McKown published in 1897; this says
that John McKown came from Scotland, and arrived in North America
about 1767. As that William McKown (1842-1924) was alive in 1897,
and presumably interviewed for the sketch, we can infer that there
was some basis for Scottish origin and this arrival date from family
oral history.
Articles in local newspapers published by William Mohr in the 1950's
repeat this origin of the McKowns from Scotland, as did Fred Abele
in his 1973
article on finding the old McKown gravestones. However, Fred
Abele in an article
published in 1981 in his column in a local Albany County
newspaper made the claim that John McKown was born in Ireland, in
(London)Derry, married there, and took his family on a ship to North
America from there in 1766 or 1767. Abele's article stated that the
wife and some children died during the voyage, with John and five
children surviving, but the source of this new information was not
given. The last surviving person in the McKownville McKown line died
in 1972, so it seems unlikely to have come from that source. Church
records in the 1790's to 1820's of baptisms in Albany and New
Scotland show that the McKowns were Presbyterians, so an emigration
either from Scotland or the northern part of Ireland is possible,
but we have found no clear record online that bears on the question
of whether their Scottish ancestors went to Ireland shortly before
the birth of John Mckown in 1722, or long before, or perhaps after,
or not at all*#.
John McKown's son William McKown (1763-1843) at age 14, and his
father are
mentioned in The Annals of Tryon County as being in
Cherry Valley# NY in the summer of 1778 (his father is
not identified by name; by inference the other siblings of William
were there also). The settlement was abandoned after the massacre of
November 11, 1778. Later records show that John and three of his
children (James, William, and Barnard) had come to and resettled in
the Albany area; two others (Mary, and Robert) did return to Cherry
Valley. So these five children of John McKown survived to adult age,
and arrived in North America with him in 1767, if that story is
accepted. The old gravestone found in 1973 was one of several that
were from the McKown family graveyard behind William McKown's hotel
on the Great Western Turnpike, and it is likely that John Mckown
died and was first buried there.
#Cherry Valley originally was settled in part
by people who were persuaded to move in 1741 from New Londonderry in
New Hampshire. If the story of arriving in North America in 1767 is
wrong, and the McKowns arrived much earlier, perhaps the story of
origin in Londonderry is from New Hampshire, rather than Ireland.
Specific old records for the McKowns have so far not been found, so
this may be difficult to resolve.
*There is one online item that is an intriguing close match to the
birth date obtained by calculation from the old gravestone; a Scottish
baptism record for John Mckoun that falls only 4 days before
the calculated birth date if the 11-day calendar shift of 1752 is
added to the lifetime on the stone. Perhaps John McKown actually did
have a Scottish origin!
The origin of the name McKown
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names suggests that it derives from
Gaelic Mac Gobhann, "the son of the smith" i.e. the blacksmith.
Plenty of related variants exist, for instance MacKown, Mackern,
McGown, MacGowan, McCoun, etc.
These are most common in the area of Glasgow and Lanarkshire in the
Scottish Midland Valley in the 1881 census of England, Scotland, and
Wales.
return to McKown family tree and
gravesites
return to McKownville local history
page
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Association index page