Bizarre but true:
When I was a kid, my paternal gramma kept taking me to the Catholic Church Cemetery back the road from here, to lay flowers beside the simple stones that marked our kinfolk, buried in the late 1700s/early 1800s.
The church is long gone, only the limestone foundation remains.
Never made sense that a slew of my kin were buried there, as we’ve all been Protestant for as long as I remember.
Then, I discovered that I had an aunt named Lana McLucas but we’re just Lucas.
When they dropped the pope, they also dropped the Mc.
During the “No Irish” era, I reckon.
Mine were in St. Mary’s City, a couple of surnames that would lead most to think Catholic, but not one hint of it anywhere, ever. They eventually made their way over to Fairfax County, VA, then fell in with Moravians and ended up here in NC, the whole lot of them, they removed en masse.
I thought that Mc is Scottish Mac is Irish