There have been some recent postings regarding John Leonard Bowers of Carter Co., TN. I thought I would share with the list some recent results from the Bowers DNA Project. See our website at http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/bowers/home. (Please excuse some of the formatting problems on the different pages. A recent revision of the host website has been causing me all sorts of grief.) Over the years, there has been much debate about whether John Leonard Bowers of Carter Co., TN was the son of Henry Boward or George Bowers, both of Hagerstown, Washington Co., MD. (Pedigrees for both appear on the Patriarchs Page.) Pension records show that John Leonard Bowers was a resident of Hagerstown when he enlisted in the Maryland Line in 1778. Both Henry Boward and George Bowers also lived in Hagerstown in 1778 and both had a son named Leonard, hence the debate. The fact that the pension application of John Leonard Bowers shows that he belonged to a regiment and company whose roster shows a Leonard Boward and a Valentine Boward (probable brother of Leonard and namesake for one of his sons), but no Leonard Bowers, along with other excellent research by Robert Boward (see Henry Boward pedigree on Patriarchs Page for his contact information), has persuaded many that Henry Boward was the father of John Leonard Bowers. Y-DNA testing indicates otherwise. On the Results Page, compare B-11/B-42, descendants of John Leonard Bowers, with B-14, a descendant of Henry Boward. The haplotype of John Leonard Bowers, which is confirmed by the match between descendants through different sons, does not match the Boward haplotype nor, for that matter, even the Boward haplogroup. While there is a slim chance the tested Boward descendant had a non-paternal event in his line, or even that John Leonard Bowers was himself the product of a non-paternal event, either of which would account for the failure to match, it seems much more likely that George Bowers was the father of John Leonard Bowers and that the regimental roster simply misspelled his name. These Y-DNA results indicate researchers of this line should probably turn their attention to finding proof that George Bowers was his father. Please note that this is not my Bowers line and thus I can't contribute much more to this discussion. Robert Strong Administrator of the Bowers DNA Project