MAR, you have a thoughtful message, and I certainly agree with much of what
you have said. But I do have a couple of points of disagreement with you.
If I am not mistaken, many of the members of this group do not trace their
ancestry to the 19th or early 20th century, but rather much earlier. I
don't know when my Chapman family came to America, but it is certainly going
to be sometime in the 18th century or maybe the 17th century. I think most
members of this group will eventually trace their Chapman lines back to the
same era. Also, the Chapman name in England is not as common as you might
think. According to the report found at
<
http://www.neilthompson.co.uk/UKSurname.htm> the Chapman surname was ranked
68th in name frequency in England in 1851, with Smith, Jones, Williams and
Brown being the most common four names. Another point which may cast some
doubt on your conclusion is that many Chapman families in America trace
their roots to common locations (we hear a lot about Frederick Co., VA and
Saybrook, CN, for example). This suggests to me that there may be common
ancestors in these locations. That is what the DNA study is intended to
confirm. I sincerely hope that it will not be necessary to take thousands
of samples of DNA to find matches among our group of Chapman researchers.
That would obviously cast serious doubt on the wisdom of conducting the DNA
study. It also is not consistent with the results found in other surname
studies which have found clear family lines with much smaller sample numbers
than you suggest. I suspect if we get 20 or 30 samples we will find some
clear lines emerging. We'll see.
Mike Chapman
_____________________________________________
Michael L. Chapman
The Chapman Firm
One North Parkway Square, Suite 200
4200 Northside Parkway
Atlanta, Georgia 30327
Direct Dial 404-262-3320 - Fax 404-237-2150
-----Original Message-----
From: maraix [mailto:maraix@wanadoo.fr]
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 2:05 AM
To: CHAPMAN-DNA-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [CHAPMAN-DNA] Chapman
I would just like to make a couple of general comments after reading recent
messages.
You don't need DNA testing to know that Chapman roots in the New World
(except for those who may have anglicized their names from Kaufman or
similar) are going to come from the British Isles. I don't think the
Vikings or Christopher Colombus (whoever actually got there first) would
have found native Americans called Chapman!
Whereas there are some families whose roots go back to a single immigrant
family, Chapman is such a common name in the British Isles - almost as
common as Smith - that in 400 years, and particularly during the mass
emigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Chapmans from thousands of
different families must have made their way to the US and Canada. It seems
a bit unrealistic to me to expect to find matches easily among today's
Chapmans in the United States (or Britain for that matter), without taking
thousands and thousands of DNA samples.
It is obvious that names which are derived from occupations, like Smith,
Chapman, Farmer, Baker, Saddler, Carter, Chandler, Brewer, etc, are going to
have multiple sources. Every village would have had one or more!
MAR in France.
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