Page 21 - The Ancestry of Francis Bryan (1770-1863)

I had my brother test his YDNA on Family Tree DNA. His YDNA is not a match to Morgan Bryan who married Martha Strode nor is he a match to William Bryan, Sr. who married Margaret Strode. YDNA only tests the patrilineal connection, the Y chromosome passed down from father to son.
When I began experimenting with ThruLines, I had placed Joseph Josiah in the place of my fourth great grandfather but I had left the slots on my tree for his parents blank. ThruLines will make suggestions up to and ending with the fifth great grandparents. And so it made the following suggestion for me. It said that I should research Morgan Bryan and Martha Strode as my fifth great grandparents. And it was also showing many sibling and cousin connections to members of both the Morgan Bryan and Martha Strode family as well as to William and Margaret Bryan family. DNA connections.
NOOOOOOO! Now what.
I knew that the Morgan Bryan descendants’ and my brother’s YDNA did NOT match! I knew that William Bryan descendants’ and my brother’s YDNA did NOT match!
Tick-tock, tick-tock......brain synapses churning....think outside the box....light bulb goes off! It was clear that I had some kind of connection to these families and it was equally clear that it was not through YDNA, therefore it had to be through a matrilineal connection.
Could Francis’ MOTHER be the one who was related to these families?
It had to be.
And so I started to look for any possible female descendant of either Morgan Bryan and Martha Strode or of William and Margaret Bryan that would fit.
Morgan and Martha are easy to research. This family has been researched (along with the Boone family) probably more than any family who lived in the area of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina at that time. Many extensive family histories exist that list their descendants. It was easy for me to rule out Morgan and Martha as fifth or even sixth great grandparents.
THAT LEFT WILLIAM AND MARGARET BRYAN.
There is some good documentation of William Bryan, Sr.'s family but it is not as complete (or accurate) as that of Morgan and Martha. Some histories say that Morgan Bryan and William Bryan were brothers but as I have mentioned before, YDNA research appears to prove that they are not related.
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