Oral family history has my great, great grandfather, Robert "Red Robin" Johnston/e, born in 1808 in Ireland to a Scottish-born father, name unknown. Details of his mother are also unknown. Y-DNA testing of male descendants has verified connections with Francis Johnston, b. 1805 in Ireland, and Archibald Johnstone, b. 1815 in Ireland. We match on all 67 markers tested. Two other families that have been closely connected to our Johnston/es are Anderson and Wylie. They bought farms close to one another and intermarried in Canada. Research indicates that they were also close to each other in Ireland and intermarried there too. I have verified Wylies in Coolshinny (just SW of Magherafelt), Co. Londonderry , Ireland, and oral family history has our Andersons on a farm some 3 miles south of Castledawson, Co. Londonderry, Ireland. I have not been able to document this. I have not located my Johnstons in Ireland though one Wylie told me that they were in the Magherafelt area too. I found an old email which indicates that the sender had his Wylie marrying a Johnston/e in Poldean in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, some 500 years ago. No other information was included Descendants of both families later went to Co. Londonderry, Ireland, and settled in the Magherafelt area. He also mentioned the Elder and Shields families were close to his Wylies in Scotland and some moved with them to Ireland and then onto Canada. A monument and registry at Westminster Cemetery, Ontario, Canada, indicates that the Reverend Matthew Elder (d. April 2, 1880, aged 97, born in Co. Tyrone, Ireland) was a relative of my Andersons. This further cements the inter-relationships. When I was in Scotland some 13 years ago I was talking with a local who had asked me what my connections to this part of Scotland were. When I mentioned my Anderson family he pointed to the west and said that there was a pocket of Andersons just over those hills. I was in either Lockerbie or Moffat at the time. Either way they were very close to our Johnstons in Poldean. It now appears that some of my Anderson, Johnston/e and Wylie families (along with Elder and Shields) may have known each other in Scotland and descendants of them traveled to Ireland and then onto Upper Canada. Has anyone out there come across relationships among these families in Dumfriesshire? Cliff. Johnston "May the best you've ever seen, Be the worst you'll ever see;" from A Scots Toast by Allan Ramsay