Frank I have traced my Broun/Brown ancestry on the paper trail to 1500 in Scotland and could get no further. So I did both a Y -DNA and mtDNA test. The results were that I got close matches to a number of Browns. But I also got a lot of close matches to names like Burns, Hamilton, Ramsey, Maxwell. All of these names have something in common - they are Scottish surnames. So with you and me I would suggest, before surnames became common , our tribe in Scotland lived possibly for thousands of years. By the time surnames started coming in, different surnames were adopted but the underlying DNA was similar or exactly the same in some cases. I would say yes, you are related to these Ramseys and Maxwells but way back before surnames started to be used. You haven't a snowballs chance in hell of matching up with them on the paper trail. By the way my Y-DNA is R1b1b2. Those of you that have had your Y-DNA done try this little experiment. In inverted commas put in Google your first 12 DNA markers. I did that and I hit a website called Border Reivers. My DNA was most closely associated with the borders of Scotland/England where in fact my paper trail had led me. Ken Brown Gold Coast Australia

Ken, If Frank's BROWN's are matching ODOMs and MAXWELLs at the level of 37/37, even though they are Haplogroup R1b1b2, their connection is almost certainly within the span of genealogical time (i.e., under 10 generations): http://www.familytreedna.com/genetic-distance-markers.aspx?testtype=37 which means we are looking at NPEs, not associations before surname adoption. The overall NPE rate is about 10%, so anyone who finds themselves having better matches with surnames other than their own needs to explore the possibility they bear an NPE. And if you don't match a BROWN family you're connected to on paper, one you should match, you can probably count on having an NPE. I am not so pessimistic about finding, if not the precise individual, the true family origin of someone with an NPE. You may find this page at my site encouraging: http://dgmweb.net/genealogy/DNA/General/NPE_Resolutions.shtml Identifying the ancestral family of an NPE is not dissimilar to identifying the ancestral family of adoptees. There's a large and very successful adoptee project at FTDNA. You don't hear much about it because most adoptees want this research done in private, so the Adoptee Project doesn't even have a public web site. Given the distribution of Haplogroup R1b (western Europe, especially, the British Isles): http://dgmweb.net/genealogy/DNA/Graphics/Map-Distribution-of-R1b.shtml it's not surprising you would resemble the Border-Reivers group. Have all of you who are R1b been deep SNP tested? And have you all joined your haplogroup project? Doing both helps yourself and everyone else, too. Diana > -----Original Message----- > From: brown-bounces@rootsweb.com On Behalf Of Ken & Alice Brown > Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 7:51 PM > To: brown@rootsweb.com > Subject: [BROWN] Did the bull jump the fence? > > Frank > > I have traced my Broun/Brown ancestry on the paper trail to > 1500 in Scotland and could get no further. So I did both a Y > -DNA and mtDNA test. The results were that I got close > matches to a number of Browns. But I also got a lot of close > matches to names like Burns, Hamilton, Ramsey, Maxwell. All > of these names have something in common - they are Scottish > surnames. So with you and me I would suggest, before surnames > became common , our tribe in Scotland lived possibly for > thousands of years. By the time surnames started coming in, > different surnames were adopted but the underlying DNA was > similar or exactly the same in some cases. I would say yes, > you are related to these Ramseys and Maxwells but way back > before surnames started to be used. You haven't a snowballs > chance in hell of matching up with them on the paper trail. > By the way my Y-DNA is R1b1b2. Those of you that have had > your Y-DNA done try this little experiment. In inverted > commas put in Google your first 12 DNA m! > arkers. I did that and I hit a website called Border > Reivers. My DNA was most closely associated with the borders > of Scotland/England where in fact my paper trail had led me. > > Ken Brown > Gold Coast > Australia > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > BROWN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > >