Introduction

There are two groups of Livingstons in the world today. One is the highland Clan Livingstone, formerly Clan MacLea. The men in this group are not a single family, but many families brought together by socio-political allegiances under the leadership of a chief. The other Livingston group are the once wealthy and powerful lowland family who lost their lands and their titles in the early 1700s, and have since more or less disappeared into the mists of history.

Why the shared surname? No one knows. All we know for sure is that, in the mid 1600s, the MacLeas formed some kind of alliance with the lowland Livingstons that allowed the former to use the name of the latter. Wikipedia:

In the mid seventeenth century James Livingston of Skirling, who was of a branch of these Lowland Livingstons, was granted a nineteen-year lease of the Bishoprics of Argyll and the Isles. Sometime before 1648, James Livingston seems to have stayed at Achanduin Castle on Lismore, and it is thought that around this time that the surname Livingstone would have been adopted by MacLeas on the island.

According to the Clan Livingstone website, the lowland Livingston family are ex-highlanders and members of the clan. It is denied that there is any evidence for a disconnection between the highlanders and the lowlanders, and it is affirmed that "the available evidence suggests that all Livingstons and MacLeas belong to the same clan." Someone who saw no such connection between the highland and lowland Livingstons was an amateur historian, and descendant of the lowland Livingstons, E.B. Livingston. He wrote of the eponymous and mysterious founder of the Livingstons (Leving of Leving's Town) that he was "undoubtedly" of Saxon lineage. 

The first objective of this project is to determine the origin, and the Y-DNA signature, of Leving and the lowland Livingstons. And if we know this much, we will know by inference if there is any genetic connection between the highland and lowland Livingstons. The primary means by which this objective will be pursued is a DNA test known as the "Big-Y, with an initial focus on my uncle R.D. Livingstone's Big-Y test results.