Myron Logan Poe and John Wesley Poe Jr.

They came to Missouri in the late 1820s from North Carolina. Then in 1853 they went as part of a wagon train to Oregon and finally settled in Northern California in 1857

George...The Poe line has been really hard to trace but here is what I know. William B. Poe was born in North Carolina in 1805. So far, I cannot find his parents. He migrated to Missouri in the early 1830s but not sure if that was from North Carolina or if he had migrated somewhere else earlier. He married a widow, Nancy Mulkey (nee Johnson) in about 1834. She had three children from her first marriage to Mulkey - William, Wesley and a daughter. When her husband Mulkey died in the late 1820s, she migrated to Missouri with other members of the Mulkey family. It appears that she may have been older by about 5 years than William B. Poe. They had a second family - Robert in 1834, Julia in 1836 and James in 1838. All three born in Missouri...probably Buchanan County. William and family joined a wagon train to Oregon in 1853. They homesteaded there but then went down into Northern California in 1857 for William and 1858 for Robert who had married Louisa Lambert in 1855 in Oregon. Their second son, John Wesley, was my great grandfather and the father of John Wesley Poe Jr. in this photo. John Wesley Sr. was born in 1862. John Wesley Jr. was born in 1897. My Dad, pictured here with him, was his second son and born in Visalia, CA in 1918.

Three distinct Poe families lived close to one another in Chatham County, NC, at the time of the Revolutionary War. One was of English origin and very wealthy, and county court sessions were held in the inn that they owned before construction of the first court house. I'd bet that William B. Poe was part of that group. If DNA sampling shows a match between your family and descendants of Simon Poe, then you'll know that you're related to them. I seem to remember seeing the given name William among them roughly 200 years ago.
My 3x Great Grandpa Jesse Poe, Sr., started out poor but became wealthy as a livestock dealer. There is a variety of stories about his true origins. All we can say with relative certainty is that he was born in Culpeper Co., VA. His particular family appears to have been closely related to a Thompson/Thomason family back in Culpeper County. Their DNA does not match that of the line that includes Simon Poe (ancestor of the more aristocratic Poes of Chatham Co.).
I don't know anything about the third group of Poes. They may have been of German origin. A lot of Germans immigrated through Pennsylvania and settled in North Carolina.

There are a lot of DNA test these days. Do you have any recommendations on which would help me determine my relationship with Simon specifically?

Sorry for the delay. I was out of town for much of June and have been trying to catch up with the various messages that were waiting. I'd recommend going with autosomal testing through Ancestry.com. I like the fact that you don't just get DNA matches, but also family trees for those who've linked theirs with their test data. So far, I discovered two large groups of cousins who descend from Struve and Mullen relatives who went west from Pennsylvania in the 1800's. No surprises yet with the Poes; the predicted relationships that've popped up have matched pretty closely the detailed genealogy that I have for my NC relatives by that name.