Re: Bloomer DNA/O'Gormley
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In reply to:
Re: Bloomer DNA
Anthony Gagliani 4/03/09
When I first started studying the Bloomer family origins I was told that the Bloomers were from the O'Gormley family.
However comparing my DNA with some O'Gormley DNA on Y-search it showed that while both the O'Gormleys and my Bloomers were descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages they came on very different lines. However one of my ancestors in Ireland seems to have used the name John Gormley as a return to a more Irish surname as Gorm means blue in Gaelic. He was quite wealthy and members of the Bloomer family and their connections rented some of his lands and houses (found the records in the Cavan Library when I was there last year). The New York Bloomer DNA is also R1b1b2 but not from Niall of the Nine Hostages (M-222). It turned out that my closest DNA matches on familytree DNA were of the surnames Alexander and Leber of America (the Leber ancestor was adopted so most likely his real father was also an Alexander)and thus this demonstrated that my ancestor James Bloomer who went to Cavan Ireland in about 1783 at a time when many soldiers came there. My James Bloomer was most likely the son of Abigail Bloomer (daughter of Joseph Bloomer and Mercy merritt) and James Alexander. Abigail (Bloomer) Alexander secondly married John Bloomer her cousin the son of John and Bethia Bloomer.
The DNA evidence thus seemed to prove that my ancestor James Bloomer did come from America and that he was in fact an Alexander on his male line but used the surname of Bloomer (which was the maiden name of his mother and the surname of his stepfather). One of his descendants called John Alexander Bloomer moved in the 19th century to New Jersey where other Bloomer relatives also settled (their records can be found through ancestry.com).
There may be other Gormley's who also took the surname Bloomer but I haven't found them yet.
The Bloomer's of Gloucestershire all seem to be involved in the metal business (chainmail etc)and In researching my alexander connection I discovered that The Alexander family settled Novo Scotia and seemed to have some kind of secret mining operation there. Maybe Robert Bloomer was bought out by them (with a number of Scottish and English settlers) and later moved south to the New England colonies after the French took Novo Scotia. See Mark Finian's book "the First Novo Scotian" (I think that is the name as I am typing from memory).