This project hast to purposes. They evolved out of the history of the project. One is to identify and compile Y DNA on Gower family groups. The other is to follow and facilitate Y DNA testing of my brother's Y DNA matches. His closest Y DNA match, Jim Gower, has a genetic distance from my brother, whose emigrant ancestor was John Smith from Ireland, of 2 at 67 markers. While I suspected John Smith from Ireland, a Presbyterian weaver who with is wife landed at New Castle, Delaware, about 1794, industrious as they come, some of his children were extremely successful, was Scotch-Irish, I pursued the Gower link as easier to trace, and that so far appears to be a mistake. Two other families more distantly related to my brother are clearly from Scotland. While appearances could be deceiving and it is interesting that I've been told that McGowan is "Irish" for Smith, a highly unusual naming pattern shared by Jim Gower's line and the Gowers of Kidderminster, England, make it look like this line is Scottish and somewhere his line crossed with my Smiths. Unfortunately we are having trouble getting a single other Gower of that large and prominent family group to do Y DNA testing, particularly descendants of earlier branch-offs of that family whose Y DNA could most usefully shed light on it. The origins of that family are a mystery and you'd think they'd want to learn anything they could, including whether the family even spent time in Ireland. My brother turned out to belong to a 3rd century cluster that I indeed helped identify, together with Ken Nordtvedt of the I1 project, called AS 121210. It looks as though one or more ancestors who lived about the 3rd century served as Roman auxiliaries in England and on the middle Rhine - unless they came from the middle Rhine. More likely they came from the lower Rhine or northern Germany. It's possible that the family that they really were independently settled in Frankish colonies on the middle Rhine; the Franks were probably former Roman military auxiliary commanders grown rich and powerful, who initially had a small center of power on the lower Rhine, and rapidly expanded, building on their Roman connections. Otherwise, every member of this cluster whose origins in the 17th or 18th centuries can be identified, had emigrant ancestors whose place of origin was within a few miles of a major Roman fort or fortified city, including the major Roman fort at Chester, where Saxons didn't settle until the 8th century. A line of Roman forts extended into Scotland past Alloa, where the Patterson family lived in 1600, and Scotland was formally and sometimes actively Roman territory, but more likely the ancestors of my brother's Scottish matches came there with massive migrations from Yorkshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire during Northumbrian and Norman times. That was the most dense area of German auxiliary activity in England, and the Scottish forts were also staffed from there. The Gower name has Saxon, Norman, Welsh and French roots. There are a number of Gower families, several areas of England where the name is relatively common, and several English aristocratic families of this name. There should be quite a number of Gower Y DNA lineages. Gore and Gower are often twisted into each other, and Gower and Gowan are sometimes twisted into each other. I had to argue with Family Tree DNA that Gower and a different but similar name aren't the same name. I am personally especially interested in exploring a close Y DNA match between my own paternal Smith line and a member of the South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee branch of the Worcester Gower family.