MacAndrew(s):

The MacAndrew (McAndrew) family is of Norman origin, are a branch of the Barretts of Bac, County Mayo. They became practically an Irish Sept, having a well defined territory on the eastern side of Lough Conn. So numerous were they in the seventeenth century that they occupy half a column of the large page index of the Mayo Book of Survey and Distribution. They appear in it also under the synonym FitzAndrew. Not so numerous now, they are still concentrated in Co. Mayo and all the sixteen Mac Andrew births registered in 1890 were in Mayo. Griffith’s Valuation of 1856-57 shows a similar distribution. There were 232 people listed in the Valuation with the surname of McAndrew - and 186 of these were in County Mayo. The homeland of the McAndrew name can be pinpointed as being in the northwest corner of County Mayo in the civil parish of Kilcommon in what was known as the Barony of Erris. Up to the end of the seventeenth century the name was also well known in Co. Kerry. In 1597, three Mac Andrews of that county were attainted, in 1622 we meet a MacAndrew of Ardfert, and their association with that part of the country is testified by the place-name Ballymacandrew in the Tralee area. They were presumably a branch of the Fitzgeralds who have since resumed their original patronymic. At one time MacAindréis, anglicized MacAndrew, was adopted as a Gaelic patronymic by the Scottish family of Ross; their descendants appear to have resumed the surname Ross, which is numerous in Ireland, especially in Ulster; of the 90 Ross births registered in 1866, 70 were in that province and in 1890 the proportion is much the same. The only county outside Ulster with any considerable number is Cork."