The following background was written by Dr. Harold L McPheeters.   He started the McPheeters y-dna Group in 2003.

Dad died January 14, 2021; he was 97.   
I am David McPheeters (197360), his oldest son.   I am now the Administrator of this McPheeters Group. 
I have retained Dad's extensive genealogy and dna research.

HL McPheeters background:
For 25 years I have gathered genealogical information on the McPheeters Family in America including information on all variant spellings of the name. The surname has been spelled in several different ways -- even by the same individuals, but especially by clerks and Census takers who often spelled the name as it sounded. The data are being prepared for publication. Today most families use the spelling McPheeters, but others spell their names McPheters, McFeeters, McFeaters, and McPeters and sometimes with minor variations such as McFeders, McFeatters and McFeeture.

The first immigrants of the name came to the American Colonies from Northern Ireland between 1710 and 1730 and settled mainly in the Pennsylvania Colony (five -- William, Alexander, John, Charles, and James -- in the Scots-Irish Settlement in Chaster and Lancaster Counties) and two -- John and Archibald -- in the Massachsetts Bay Colony (Maine). Three of those Pennsylvania immigrants -- William, Alexander and Charles later moved to Orange/Augusta County, Virginia, by 1740, and Charles moved on to western North Carolina by 1750. Charles changed the spelling to McPeters at the time of the Revolutionary War. Descendants of the Maine family spell the name McPheters while the descendants of the other lines use McPheeters -- except James whose descendants use McFeeters or McFeaters in western Pennsylvania.

There were later immigrants, usually spelled McFeeters or McFetters, from Northern Ireland also mainly to Pennsylvania from 1800 to 1850, but one of those families came to Canada and then to Vermont, and another came to South Carolina and then to Alabama. That family became McPeters.

There are also African-American and Mulatto families of McPheeters and McPeters who are related to the McPheeters and McPeters who were slave owners before the Civil War.

It is highly likely that these various McPheeter lines are all related in some degree -- particularly those original immigrants to Pennsylvania and Maine and quite possibly the later immigrants also.

A prominent Presbyterian clergyman in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1842 wrote in his "Some Account of My Paternal and Maternal Ancestors" that the name McPheeters originated with William, the son of a Peter Hume of the Highlands of Scotland, who was dissatisfied with the shabby treatment given him by his half-siblings from his father's first marriage and so decided he would take the Surname McPeter (i.e. son of Peter), and that the orthography changed over the years to McPheeters. The undocumented account further stated that within a couple generations the descendants of that William McPeters moved over to Northern Ireland and then began to come to America within another two or three generations.

The fact that we find almost no McPheeters-like names in the telephone directories of Scotland, but some in the directories of Northern Ireland lends a bit of credence to that legend.



The project now (March 2006) has exactly matching (or very close) 12 marker DNA Y-gene test results for male descendants who spell the name McPheeters, McPeters, McFeeters and McFeaters all of which lends further credence to Rev. William McPheeters' account. Where we have 25 marker tests, there are exact matches at that level also. A couple of those matches are in African-American McPheeters.