It has recently come to light that male Van Gilder descendants of the Jacob Van Gilder family of Monongalia and Marion Counties, West Virginia and Cape Girardeau County, Missouri have the uniquely Native American Paternal Haplogroup Q1a3a1 also known as Q-M3. Further testing has refined this to Q-CTS3459 and the Big Y test has refined it to: Q-BZ2034. This means that Jacob was not the immigrant from Holland that his descendants thought him to be. There is also a group of known descendants of the Mahican / Mohican Indian named Toanunck / Tawanaut who was from the Egremont, Berkshire County, Massachusetts area and who became known as Jan Van Gelder / John Van Guilder. His children lived in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Vermont. With Y-DNA testing, we have proved that these two groups of Van Gilders and Van Guilders are related to each other along with the Van Galders. Once the link was established, we knew where to look for the paper trail to fill in the missing lineage. Our goal is to have as many people with some form of the Van Gilder surname Y-DNA tested as possible to figure out which groups of Van Gilders in the United States are related to one another. This project will benefit all descendants whether they are from an actual Dutch Van Gilder family or descend from a Native American man who took the name at some point. We will link up different groups of Van Gilders who have the same Y-DNA. This project will help us pick up where the paper trail leaves off. So far 17 males with some variant of the Van Gilder surname have been have been determined to have Native American Y-DNA, 11 of these tested through FTDNA, and 10 of which have joined the project. These 17 men are descended straight paternally from a Mohican man of both Mahican and Wappinger decent who resided along the Massachusetts - New York border. There have also been 4 males with the Van Gilder surname who have Y-DNA tested and joined the project and whom have European Y-DNA, and they can trace back to the Dutch Van Gelder family of New York and New Jersey. The two families lived in close enough proximity to one another that they could possibly have had some sort of connection although documentation of that has never been found. It is presently unknown whether the two families knew one another. Descendants of these two families followed similar migration paths and settled in the same parts of the county, further adding to the confusion. There were "Indian" Van Gilders who thought they were "Dutch" and there were "Dutch" Van Gilders who thought they were "Indian." Through Y-DNA testing, we are able to separate fact from fiction and help all Van Gilders find their true straight paternal origin. *Only those testers who have chosen to make their results public are viewable on the public website.