My goal in participating in the Chapman DNA project is very focused and
attainable. I want to either connect to or separate from a half dozen
Chapman families living near or along the Rappahannock in Virginia between
1680 and 175o - and a few specific Chapman families that migrated west out
of Culpeper and Orange.
Tom
I should have added - separating from is as almost as valuable as connecting
to.
Tom
I don't know how many people are involved in your project, but of course if they all
already know they belong to families who arrived in particular places in America in the
17th or 18th centuries then I suppose you have a better chance of finding some common
genes.
As for the ranking of surnames, I am not a statistician, but I think that taking the 88
most popular names in 1996 and comparing them with a tiny (2%) sample in 1851 gives a
completely distorted picture. How could an Indian name which did not appear in the 1851
census (Patel) rank 88th when dozens of common English names that did appear aren't on
the list at all? And Chapman would move up if you eliminate the Irish, Welsh and Scottish
names and variants such as Clark and Clarke, but even in 68th place, I still think that
makes it a very common name, given the enormous number of English surnames there are.
I'm afraid we haven't yet been able to get back further than the early 19thc with
our working-class Chapman ancestors in London, but perhaps those who went to America in
the 17th and 18th centuries were literate property owners who left a paper trail. Unlike
the genealogies produced for American Presidents, we cannot all claim to have blue blood!
Good luck with your project.
MAR in France.