The Beers surname project was begun by descendants of Jabez Beers of Morristown, NJ (1722-1777), in the hopes to connect his branch to the larger American Beers family as described in Mary Louise Regan's Beers Genealogy. According to the earliest records, The first colonists of this family were Richard Anthony Beers and the sons of his brother James: Anthony and James. The name is sometimes Beers or Bere. They arrived in the Connecticut colony sometime in the mid 1630s. There the family married with other early New England colonists and spread across the area. It is thought that the family came from Gravesend, Kent, England. In the genetic testing of the male Beers so far, the Y-DNA comes out in a very new subclade. Y-DNA: R1b-M343-M269-P312-L21-DF13-FGC11134-A286-FGC49407. The R1b is the most common Y-DNA haplotype of males of Western European descent. As one follows down the subclades, one moves forward in time. The L21 subclade, identifies the line as proto-Celtic following down into a new, smaller less tested group, with the most recent ancestor about 3000-2800 ybp. It does not group with the traditional Celtic groups of the British Isles (Scot, Welsh, Irish), however the most recent subclade branches off from a small group that contains a subclade of men from southern Ireland. While the Beers apparently came to the New World from the British Isles, it is less likely that they are Irish. However the match that was made with a male who was not a Beers, was with a Belgian man who lives in France. In reading the history of the Celts in the British Isles, there is a Celtic tribe from Gaul called the Belgae, for whom Belgium derives its name, who are found in southern England at the time of the Roman invasions and also settled in the southern part of Ireland. It is possible with the name of the earliest known Beers of the American line being Martin Bere ca 1450 in Kent that he/his family emigrated from the Low Countries. Which would explain that in an area where most British males test more U-106, Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) in the eastern part of England, this line is genetically "Celtic". It is the hope of the administrator to have as many male Beers in the United States to test and verify the connection of the larger American Beers family back to common related male Beers. Even more exciting it the possibility that men in Europe (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) will test and provide a connection to a Gaulish Celt male progenitor, or at least provide direction to the most recent common ancestor located in an area where we can find the development of the surname.