There is a McLea/Livingston DNA project that has numerous participants and it is helping to reunite and connect the numerous families with these and similar surnames all over the world. In addition, the project hopes to untangle and distinguish relationships between the various Celtic families and clans who had blood relationships in the homelands of the MacLeas and Livingstons.

More will be written on this subject at a later point, but you can read more at Andrew Lancaster's DNA project website. Our family is among the "R1b" haplotypes, which is one of the most common signatures in Europe and especially the British Isles.

At the moment, DNA analysis of the Y-chromosome of Kyle and his cousin Glenn McLea have helped to identify related families among the Western Scottish and Northern Irish families of McLin, McAulay/McColly, McCain, Gay/McKay, and Henry. Determining what this may mean in terms of the heritage and genealogy of the MacLea family has yet to be discerned.

The MacLea DNA in both Kyle and Glenn is a very close match, however, and this indicates that both men and their families retain the same DNA signature from their common ancestor James Brown MacLea, our Scottish immigrant ancestor.

Learn about DNA and genealogy in some webisodes from KTLA in LA here.