My name is Debra Van Wagoner Sutherland.My mother is Leola I. McKee, daughter of Sterlie Otis McKee, son of Shannon Wilson McKee, son of Wilson McKee, son of Robert McKee, son of Alexander McKee, son of Charles McKee and Margaret Lockhart McKee. My journey started as a child at my grandma Kee’s knee listening to her tell stories of her family line the Richards and Sears.  But once in a while she would throw in a story about our McKee family line. I have a family history that my mom, Leola, wrote on Stories of her McKee Family.  Mom instilled in me the desire to do our family genealogy.  I actually remember as a young girl going with her to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah and thinking this was the most boring thing I had ever done.  Now I go up to the library and am engrossed for hours on end trying to find more missing pieces to the puzzle of the McKee family history.I started my serious research on our line in 2000. I was thrilled to find grandpa Alexander back then and thought he might be related to Alexander McKee the notorious spy for the British during the Revolutionary war (George Washington actually had a price out for his head).  He along with the Girty brothers caused a lot of problems for the patriots of American history, though I have found a few stories that shed a different light on him and when you think that he was just being loyal to the British crown you can’t completely be upset with him – but I can’t say I wasn’t grateful to discover that if we had any ties with him it was most likely before his line of McKee’s came to America!

I was even more excited when I finally found the proof I needed to show that my Alex’s father and mother were Charlie McKee and Margaret Lockhart McKee of Knox County, Ohio; Charles, as stated in the Knox County Ohio history book, was one of the first settlers in Brown Township, Knox County Ohio in 1809.  I haven’t decided if it was because of the notorious Alexander McKee who had created a bad taste in people’s mouths for the name McKee or just that they, like my grandpa, didn’t have a need to let others know their business that I haven’t been able to learn much about my McKee family thorough Ohio history books.  Most of what I have learned has been through records available in the county archives both on Ancestry and also at the Familysearch.org sites.   I have also written and gotten copies of records that I haven’t been able to find through those resources; I found Charley in the beginning of 2012 and have many documents to back up my claim of being his great granddaughter.

But with Charley once again the family line hit a brick wall.  I knew he came from Ireland and from information others have stated about him I gathered he was most likely from Donegal Co. Ireland but I had nothing to prove that fact.  I knew, despite the story of him an early settler in Knox County, that he had not come to Ohio directly from Ireland; census records indicated some children born in Pennsylvania.  But what county in Pennsylvania?  Nothing to help me there, and so far I am not finding Pennsylvania an easy place to research especially without a county.

So I heard about DNA research, and I thought well I could go down that avenue of research, but I had no direct male line of McKee’s that I could have tested for a Y-DNA test. My mom knew that her uncle Dewey had had sons, and that Dewey Jr. was to her knowledge still alive, but she had lost contact with him.  She thought he had mentioned having a son but she wasn’t sure, so on a whim one day in 2013 I googled him!   And amazingly found him in the area of Nebraska/Kansas that my great great grandpa had moved his family to after the civil war.    So I got his address and I mailed him a letter.  Long story short he was not keen to do a DNA test, but I friended his wife Patricia on Facebook and she had his two sons as friends on Facebook and so I introduced myself and low and behold his son Tom was willing to do a YDNA test for me.  That was Nov/Dec of 2013.  Tom took the test I sent him and sent in his sample, then I purchased a autosomal for both myself and my mom, and honestly I found more cousins that way that I had with Tom’s YDNA testing.  I have now tested Tom to 111 markers and still no real family to show for it – at least not closely related.

So needless to say I was a bit discouraged, but while contacting matches on Family Tree DNA I met a great guy named Conell and he felt sorry for my brickwall frustration and did some searching for me online and found this website, https://mckeefamiliesfromdonegal.com   I went there and it attracted my interest because they had McKee’s on there but also Lockhart’s!  So I emailed the administrator of the site early Jan of last year but got no response. I continued my gathering of information and hoping to get a break, had Tom and his sweet wife Laura at our yearly McKee reunion which was wonderful to find a new cousin.  I have met several along the way and enjoy their association through emails and occasional phone calls.  Did I mention I love doing genealogy work? Who knew all those years ago that tagging along with mom would result in such a fascination with my family roots.

So finally around August last year I tried once more to contact Barry McKee the admin for this McKee site and yay he wrote me back.  We have been corresponding ever since and what a great guy!  I was most interested in his family tree because he had his line back to Ireland although it was a generation or two younger than mine – I was back to 1764 and his line was 1802. But what I found most astounding was that out of his 7 given names for their McKee men, 5 of them were the same given names of 5 of my grandpa Charles’s sons.  So my thought process was “That cannot just be a coincidence”. Barry tended to agree with me and long story short decided to take the 111 Y-DNA test as well to see if he and Tom were a possible match.  These test results are in a separate webpage DNA Tests also summarized below.  As you can see there is a 108/111 match which fits with his grandpa Alexander McKee born 1802 Donegal Co Ireland, as being the Nephew of my grandpa Charles McKee born 1764 Donegal Co Ireland.  We are across the pond to our homeland!  I am very pleased and excited not only to be “proven” from Co Donegal Ireland, but also to have new family members to collaborate with to learn more about our family – the McKee’s!