This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Dunn Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/hlT.2ACEB/3659.2 Message Board Post: Our family's earliest member, James Dunn (ca. 1715-1803) of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, was, by one account, "came from the southwest of Scotland, and that he (or his descendents) had been thrown out of Ireland (someone guessed perhaps because of some criminal activity)" and, by another account, "James was a stowaway on a ship from Ireland when he was discovered -- taken to the captain for prosecution -- a childless couple name of Dunn on board offered to take him, adopt him, as soon as an arrangement could be made in the port of Boston to save him from punishment; or (from the same branch of the family, that ”James Dunn was shipwrecked on the Massachusetts (?) coast and a similar story about being taken in by a family named Dunn." My DNA does not appear to match with any other Dunns in the familytreeDNA.com project, perhaps strengthening the possibility that James was adopted by a Dunn family... This James and Elizabeth Dunn had 8 offspring: Joseph (b.1737), John (1739/40), Benjamin (1743), Betty/Betsey (1745), Rebecca (1748), James (1751), William (1754), and Sarah (1759). Does this stowaway James "Dunn" ring any bells with anyone??? Please share any possible ideas with us. Thanks