Phase II Conclusions

Phase II of the project began in June 2018 with a second examination of the remains. The two skulls were temporarily removed for detailed imaging at University College Cork. Several photographs and portraits of the Earls of Barrymore and their descendants were identified for comparison with the images.

During the examination, a fragment of newspaper was discovered in the coffin housing Barrymore1. The fragment was dated 20 January 1894. Research into vital records determined that a great great grandson of James Barry, Richard Hugh Smith Barry, died on 24 January of that year. The team has concluded that Barrymore1 was Richard, and not his ancestor. His age at death, 70, is consistent with the condition of the remains and he was a cavalry officer, which would account for some distortion in the thigh area from extensive time on horseback.

Subsequently, a systematic search was made of all gravestones and records in the Castlelyons churchyard, but no further graves were found that could be connected to James Barry, 4th Earl of Barrymore, or to other members of his family. The project team's hypothesis is that his remains, and those of his wife and possibly other family members, were removed from the crypt some time during the 19th century, possibly to safeguard them against vandalism. (James Barry's third wife, Lady Anne Chichester, died on 6 December 1753, and according to an article in the Connaught Journal of 4 January 1854 was interred at Castlelyons. Howver, there are currently no female remains in the crypt.) It appears that after the removal of the Barrymore remains, their heirs, the Smith Barrys made use of the crypt for their own family members. Estate records of the records of the Smith Barry family are held at the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland in Belfast. An examination of those records, however, did not shed any light on the family's possible use of the Castlelyons crypt.

Application had been made to the National Museum of Ireland to take additional samples and conduct testing on Barrymore1 at another laboratory to include full YDNA sequencing, or selected SNP tests if full sequencing proved to be impractical or too costly. That permission was not received and the request was withdrawn.

In early 2020 additional STR results for Barrymore1 became available from the YSeq lab in Germany. These results confirmed his major haplogroup as R1b. They strengthened the assessment that Barrymore1 is paternally related to the Z49 group (subsequently determined to be in a more recent subgroup designated R1b>U152>L2>Z49>S8183>Y11179). This was based on a detailed statistical analysis showing that Barrymore1 had an extremely unusual pattern of four STRs (DYS385, DYS459, DYS381i and DYS481 ) that was present in only 0.3 percent of his major haplogroup but in more than 75 percent of the Y11179 group in the Barry project. The analysis further indicated that two of the values from the Phase I test results should be revised. When this was done, the updated results confirmed that Barrymore1 has another uncommon STR value, DYS388=11. The combination of values for the five relevant STRs is unique to a large subgroup of the Y11179 cluster, designated Y13610. This group's common ancestor lived about 1400 CE, the time that the Barryroe branch of the family emerged with Laurence Barry in West Cork. The YDNA Test Results page shows the revised results, together with the new information from YSeq.

The overall assessment, then, is that Barrymore1 was Richard Hugh Smith-Barry, great great grandson of James Barry, 4th Earl of Barrymore. He was a descendent of the Barryroe branch, which has a distinctive haplogroup and subclade: R1b>U152>L2>Z49>S8183>Y11179>Y13610 as well as a unique combination of five STR values. There are men living today who bear that genetic fingerprint and thus are distantly related to Barrymore1 and his ancestors. For further information on this lineage, go to Barry DNA Project Test Results and scroll down to the Y11179 group, headed in dark green.

A comprehensive report from the Barry DNA Project, including these results, is available here. In June 2020 additional evidence from YDNA and autosomal testing corroborated the relationship between the Y11179 group and the Anglo-Norman Barrys. A Research Note, reporting those results , is available here.