Page 42 - The Ancestry of Francis Bryan (1770-1863)

It appears that the original histories all came about in the mid 19th century, without much documentation to back them up. Hopefully DNA will be able to sort through some of this misinformation.
First and foremost: YDNA proves that William Bryan, Sr. and Morgan Bryan are NOT brothers. Therefore, only one family can lay claim to Francis/Sara and William Smith/ Catherine as their ancestors......if any of them even existed.
Paul Gifford, a Bryan researcher, wrote an excellent article describing the problems with the lack of documentary evidence regarding both Francis Bryan and William Smith Bryan. He writes in reference to Morgan Bryan, Sr., not William Bryan, Sr., but their histories were assumed to be the same as they were assumed to be brothers.
I include it (unedited) because it is important to remember to take all undocumented family history cautiously.
From Geneology.com., https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/bryan/7582/
Ancestors of Morgan Bryan
By Paul Gifford July 06, 2007 at 01:47:01
I am going to try here to begin to explain how the alleged ancestry of Morgan Bryan (d. 1763), of Rowan County, North Carolina, was developed. It's an interesting lesson in how genealogical guesses develop into "facts," how early publication of such "facts" develops into "family traditions."
I haven't found any earlier mention of his genealogy prior to 1876, in A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri, by William S. Bryan (a descendant) and Robert Rose.
"However, before I give the details there, we should mention the manuscript genealogy from 1832 that is part of the pension application file of Samuel Bryan. This states that Samuel's "great grandfather Bryan was a Dane born in Denmark & rais'd in that Kingdom where he married a wife & lived until he had a sone born whome he called Morgan after which he remov'd to Ireland where he lived until said Morgan came to manhood who left his father in Ireland & came to Pensylvania in America where he married a woman by the name of Martha Strode...”
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