Most of the McDowells in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina, Kentucky were related with their common ancestor being Thomas or one of his sons. However, their relationships were sometimes confused. Many family members had similar names such as John and Joseph and were born about the same year for example Joseph “Pleasant Garden” McDowell in 1758 and Joseph "Quaker Meadows" McDowell in 1756. I have also found family historians have recorded birth and death dates to the wrong family member with the same name or attributed erroneous parents probably hoping to place them in their ancestral line.

Erroneously, son Ephraim is thought of as the progenitor of the McDowells in Virginia, as well as in the territory that became Kentucky. Some historians go further and attribute all McDowells as descendants of Ephraim. However, this confuses the ancestry of the descendants of Ephraim with the descendants of his brothers. There were six brothers (the six sons of Thomas McDowell) who were responsible for the many McDowell descendants. The different branches lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky and made significant contributions to the establishment and growth of these areas. Also many fought in the American Revolution to establish our freedoms.

I hope to sort the different family branches using Thomas McDowell (b. 1628) as the starting point and focus on each family member’s location and who they are with to determine to which branch they belong.