Hello fellow Bonner's, I am one of the two Bonner's in the "A" branch of the Bonner DNA Project. My cousin, Al Bonner and I had the DNA test results returned to us in October 2001. The DNA test was the missing "evidence" that we needed to tie our families together. We can trace our line back to James Bonner, born 1818 - 1820 in County Donegal, Ireland. [See RootsWeb] http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=nrbonner&id=I0040 I've done a lot of research on Bonner's-- mostly the Irish that settled into Philadelphia. I've got quite a few Philadelphia Bonner's identified but I've never looked into what I call the "Southern Branch" of the Bonner's. My branch (and most of the Philadelphia branches-- there are many) were Irish Catholics. I believe that many of the Southern Bonner's were either Scotch-Irish or English. They may be connected somehow, but I have no idea how--or where. This is where DNA testing can be very valuable in "mapping" out branches to see where they came from and how they may have mixed. In Philadelphia the "early" arrivals to that city whom carried the Bonner surname were mostly German. They arrived in the 1700's and early 1800's. I have also seen references to the French surname Bonaire becoming BONNER in English speaking countries. From about 1850 and afterwards, there was a great deal of BONNER families that emigrated from Ireland to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the 1850 city directory there were 10 Bonner's (including the Boner/Banner variants) listed. In the 1860 city directory the number of Bonner's jump to 49. In 1890 the number of Bonner's is 107. So there was massive immigration of Bonner to Philadelphia during that time period. The Bonner's that came from Ireland were almost exclusively from County Donegal. According to the number of "Boner" (the predominate spelling in 19th century Ireland) households listed in the Primary Valuation property survey of 1848-1864, there were: 186 in Donegal, 13 in Antrim, 6 in Derry, 2 in Tyrone, 1 each in Down and Belfast city. Continuing with the Irish surname, the name BONER was the English version of the Irish surname, "Ua Chnámhsighe". The Irish name was written by the English often as Crampsey or Cramsie. The English officials sometimes took the form of the word, "cnámh" a bone, and recorded the name as Bonner with its variants of Boner, Bonnar and Bonar. Anyway, that's a very short history lesson of the Irish branch of the Bonner's. Best Regards, Neil Bonner Herndon, Virginia