In 1944 Edward Mac Lysaght, Chief Genealogical Officer, Keeper of Manuscripts and chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, drew up a register of Clan Chiefs and Chieftains to present to Government. The Irish Government was aware of the survival of Irish noble families whose Heads had retained their Gaelic titles despite the "abolition" and "extinction for ever" of Gaelic titles under English laws passed between 1541 and 1613. In December 1944 the Irish Government announced that "courtesy recognition" as "Chief of the Name" would be granted to the "senior known male descendant of the last inaugurated or de facto clan Chief".

July 12, 1999, Thomas A, Sweeney, a direct, senior male line, descendant of Maolmhuire/ Sir Myles Mac Sweeney, Chief of Doe, 1596-1630, submitted a petition with genealogical proofs to the Office of Chief Herald of Ireland seeking recognition as "Chief of the Name" of the Mac Sweeneys of Doe.

July 29, 1999, the Office of Chief Herald informed Thomas A. Sweeney that his petition for recognition as "Chief of the Name" of the Mac Sweeneys of Doe would be referred to an independent consultant, expert in genealogy, for validation and that the choice of consultant would rest with the Chief Herald of Ireland.

August 2003, the consultant chosen confirmed Thomas A. Sweeney's descent from Maolmhuire/ Sir Myles Mac Sweeney, Chief of Doe, 1596-1630.

Dr. John O Donovan acknowledged, in his 1835 Donegal Survey Letters, that the Mac Sweeney Doe genealogy he recorded from Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney in Donegal, 1835, was "a generation short". Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney's father, Eamonn Mór, 1738-1834, Head of the House of Doe, had been omitted. The omission of Eamonn Rua's father (Eamonn Mór) did not impair the Mac Sweeney Doe genealogy, recorded by O Donovan, for the following reasons:

Year 1835. Dr. George Petrie, antiquarian, scholar, collector of Irish traditional music and member of the team assembled by the British Government to survey/ examine County Donegal in 1835, recorded that Eamonn Mór Mac Sweeney, Head of the House of Doe, died in Donegal the previous year, i.e.,1834. (Eamonn Mór was a piper.)

Year 1851. An extract from the 1851 census for Derryveagh, Co. Donegal, lists Edward Sweeney/ Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney (Head of the House of Doe) as residing in Altnadague, Derryveagh, and his oldest son, Eamonn Óg, as dead. Eamonn Óg, the first born, was named according to tradition after his grandfather, Eamonn Mór.

Note. The 1851 Derryveagh census extract was acquired by Irish Land Commission officials, in the early 1930's, to enable them to identify accurately the names of the forty-seven families evicted from Derryveagh, April 1861, and the names of their descendants entitled to compensatory land in Derryveagh.)

Year 1870. Eamonn Mór's name and age and confirmation that he was a piper and the grandfather of the renowned piper Tarlach Mac Sweeney (An Píobaire Mór/ The Big Piper) were recorded in an account of the Mac Sweeneys of Doe in "The Fate and Fortunes of the Earl's of Tyrone and Tyrconnell " by Rev. C. P. Meehan, M.R.I.A. (1870 edition, page 553).

Year 1909. The "Irish Weekly Times" (April 24), published an article re Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney's youngest son, Tarlach Mac Sweeney (An Píobaire Mór/ The Big Piper), entitled "Prince on a Pension". The genealogy of the Mac Sweeney Chiefly family of Doe from Tarlach back to Maolmhuire/ Sir Myles Mac Sweeney, Chief of Doe, 1596-1630, was included. Tarlach provided the genealogy and gave his grandfather's name as "Eamonn Mór".

In the early 1840's John O Donovan edited texts for the Irish Archaeological Society and in 1845 he wrote "A Grammar of the Irish Language" and two years later he published "Leabhair na gCeart/ The Book of Rights". In 1847 he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the following year was presented with its Cunningham Gold Medal. In 1849 he became professor of Celtic Languages in Queen's College, Belfast.

The "Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland/ Annals of the Four Masters" (compiled by a team of historians between 1632 and 1636) remained largely unpublished and untranslated until John O Donovan translated them between the years 1847 and 1856. The copious topographical, historical and genealogical material in his footnotes fill more than half the 4170 pages and have been universally acclaimed by scholars. Dr. Douglas Hyde (distinguished Gaelic scholar and writer, first professor of modern Irish at University College Dublin, 1909, first President of Ireland, 1937) wrote that the O Donovan edition of the Annals represented "the greatest work that any modern Irish scholar ever accomplished".

In his introduction to the recently published third edition, the medievalist Dr. Kenneth Nicholls of University College Cork, noted: "O Donovan's enormous scholarship, breathtaking in its extent when one considers the state of historical scholarship and the almost total lack of published source material in his day, still amazes one, as does the extent to which it has been depended on by others down to the present. His translations are still superior in reliability to those of Hennessy, Mac Carthy or Freeman to name three editor-translators of other Irish Annals ... his footnotes are a mine of information".

A footnote, under the year 1603, confirms that "Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney, aged 61 in 1835", whom John O Donovan met in Donegal, 1835, was the "lineal legitimate descendant" of Maolmhuire/ Sir Myles Mac Sweeney Doe, Chief of Doe, 1596-1630.

John O Donovan and his brother-in-law, Eugene O Curry (scholar, scribe, and professor of Archaeology and Irish History at the Catholic University), were the foremost scholars of their day and were joint-editors for the transcription and translation of the ancient Irish law texts. On September 5, 1835, the day he met Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney, John O Donovan wrote to Eugene O Curry informing him that he had met "Mac Sweeney Doe".

Nine days later (Sept.14, 1835) John O Donovan wrote to Owen Connellan, editor-translator of the "Annals of the Four Masters" and "Irish Historiographer to King George IV and King William IV", informing him that he had met "the present Chief of the Mac Swinies Doe".

John O Donovan recorded in writing in Donegal in 1835, information known and recognized in Donegal in 1835 "by the O Donnells and the Mac Sweeneys" and by "every old Milesian from Fanaid to Ballyshannon", i.e., that Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney, born 1774, was"Mac Sweeney Doe and heir to Doe Castle and the Sinsear (the Senior, Chief or Head) of the Clan tSuivné".

Thomas A. Sweeney (left) is the senior great, great, grandson of Eamonn Rua Mac Sweeney Doe and therefore"the senior known male descendant" of Maolmhuire/ Sir Myles Mac Sweeney Doe, last publicly inaugurated Chief of Doe.