My surname is Brewer. Hoping to verify my ancestry, I had my cousin (father's brother's son) take a Y-DNA test for the Brewer DNA research group. SURPRISE—finds out we aren't a Brewer after all. We match none of the Brewer lines. We do have a couple of unknown to me 1-2 step DNA matches, but they have no family history. At this point in time, I don't know if it was an adoption into a Brewer family, an affair by a Brewer wife, an assault on a Brewer wife or when it could have occurred. I tend to think maybe it was my 2nd g-grandfather, as he had a distinctive name, Walter Lincoln Brewer, born 1868ish in Indiana. I have never been able to find him on any census reports until he showed up in WA state in 1892. Supposedly the son of a William (Brewer?) and Elizabeth (unk). Can't find them either in any Indiana census. The sometimes seen hint of her being a McAfee is wrong, we don't DNA match with that Brewer line. Where do I start? It could have been 5 gens ago, or 10. Please know I am a 1 on a scale of 10 understanding of genetics. According to the Y-DNA test my cousin took, our 1 step DNA matches are Cavill and Schellenberg families (no family history provided) and 2 steps are a Caroll, and several Howards. The names mean nothing to me based on what I have found in my ancestry.