Dear Essex List, I am the administrator of the BYRD/BIRD DNA Project. The project may be found at: http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/b/byrd/ Please note that this is a personal request, concerning my own genealogical research. I do not work for FtDNA and have nothing to gain financially from this request, only in terms of personal family tree information. This is NOT a commercial announcement. I now have strong circumstantial evidence (but not yet to the level of proof) that the BIRD (or BRID) families listed in the e-mail header were in fact part of a single, extended BIRD clan that also sent male members to New England in the early-mid 17th c. My confidence in this theory is now high enough to offer the following: I will pay personally for a basic genetic (Y chromosome, 12 marker) test for any male lineal descendant, surname BIRD, who can demonstrate an unbroken line of male descent from any one of these BIRD families that lived in the listed towns during the 18th c. or earlier. Again, these are the BIRD families of Bishop's Stortford, Gt. Hallingbury, Little Hallingbury, Hatfield Broad Oak, Brewers End, Saffron Walden, Chelmsford, and Braintree, or any of the adjacent, surrounding parishes along the old Roman roads in that region. This test must involve a male subject surnamed BIRD (or a spelling variant). There cannot be any intervening female link or any another surname involved in the male line, since the test examines the Y chromosome only. There is no medical information to be gained from the Y chromosome test, and all information will remain strictly confidential. Please contact me directly (off list) if you are interested. Thanks in advance, Dr. Steven Bird Austin, TX, USA _________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch when you're away with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_messenger2_072008