I have been on a long hard journey researching my familyname of Genu/Gesnu. I've found that in the U.S. this name is by no means know to many people. where as in France it is not a common name but it is known to many. When researching at my local genealogy society as helpful as the members were I've basically been researching on my own. The furthest I got back to was a marriage in 1727 in Montreal, Quebec. I continued my research in Rouen, France and with the help of the Archives of Seine-Maritine I was able to continue my path only to get stuck again. Finally I've been fortunate with having extreme success to go back 10 generations of a 1609 marriage contract of Guillaume Gesnu in Renne, Orne, Basse-Normandy, France with the help of the Geneanet website. Thus the paper trail ends.

My next step was to have my brother test his YDNA at the 67 marker, this test results show his haplogroup is R-M269. He had 2 matches at the genetic distance of 1 and 4 matches at the genetic distance of 2. All member had the same last name - Cunningham and their most distant male relative was a Cunningham. Of the remaining 18 matches which were between the genetic distance of 3 to 6, nine [9] of the of these also had the same name.

Under the icon for tips - one of the 2 matches at the genetic distance of 1- match at the 12th generation of 95.66%. 

Whats next- waiting for others who are searching this name hoping they join this project. This could help us all prove that the Gesnu/Genu name did indeed come from a Scotsman called Cunningham who was strong and true to France.