This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/5gF.2ACIB/1256.1.1 Message Board Post: Haplogroup I1a seems to be closest match, although this science is changing literally every day. A book that you find in the library or bookstore is immediately obsolete on this subject. In order to find current information, one needs to read University reports or find a professor who takes the time to participate in DNA web sites. According to the folks listed above, the I1a group is the mark/description normally associated with the Angles who came to England and Scotland just after the Romans left in AD 410 and is historically now referred to as Anglo-Saxons. These folks were responsible for the name of England "Angle-land" and resided in Northumbria "Bernicia" which means "country of the Braes". Braes are found in the lowland rolling hills where there are many rivers and streams. The word Brae means "hill slope" usually just above a stream. Our ancestors would have taken the name from where they lived, near or on the brae area. The name is of Old Norse origins. Not our surname, rather the name for the area above a stream. The area in Scotland where the Brays would have come from is now called the Lothians, counties just to the north of the English border and where the border reevers were active in disrupting the local peasantry. I looked in my paper records for James Bray and did not find one listed in our family that is from your time frame. Our line is reported to have immigrated in 1652 to Virginia but that is not confirmed either. Our line is not proven earlier than the names listed in my first posting. In addition, the part about Oliver Cromwell and Ireland is somewhat subjective since the only documents we have, infers Brays of our line were with the Brays from another known line of descendants. (Immigrant Pierce Bray, early Presbyterian Elder in Maryland). The names of other folk who were with the Brays from Tipperary Ireland also showed up with our Brays in Maryland and North Carolina a few generations later. (Robert Wilson, Ephraim and Thomas Wilson, Thomas Jones, Polk, Knox, and Bray were found as Presbyterian families who were in Somerset County prior to 1700. These names would all be Scotch-Irish in origins. Polk and Knox are known to have direct Scottish origins. Ephraim Wilson a! nd Thomas Wilson were the sons of Rev. Thomas Wilson who was the first pastor of Manokin Presbyterian Congregation.) This is somewhat sloppy but it is all we have at present and at best gives us a direction for paper investigation. The Haplogroup identification was a result of testing my Y Chromosome which FTDNA performed. Glenn