Harrison dna project

[magwoodb]

Not sure how all this works....my family is originally from South Carolina...Walterboro to be more specific.  My knowledge of my family is very limited.  At times it seems as if it is shrouded in secrecy.  My mother's maiden name is Geraldine Harrison (NMI), her fathers name was Joseph Harrison (married Inez Martin) who died in a horrible vehicle accident I believe in 1956 outside Walterboro. 

[Biscuits]

To really get involved in family research, you're going to need to get a more generations.

There are different places you can look:
1. Surviving relatives may know the names of great-grandparents, or further.
2. Family bibles may have genealogical trees.
3. City/County birth records let you track ancestry one generation at a time.
4. Other researchers may be related close enough to you that they can recognize your family.

We're working on putting together a section of the website that explains more of the basics on how to get into genealogy.

[Biscuits]

I didn't mention this earlier, but, in some cases, DNA testing can help you break past barriers as well.  If you get a test done at FamilyTreeDNA, you can compare your results against their entire database.  YSearch also lets you compare against everything they have.  You'll need a decent number of results, probably 25-37 at a minimum, and then be willing to upgrade as necessary.  After you find matches, you'll have new directions to do research, but you'll have to connect the papertrails before it can really be accepted.

I still recommend that you do some basic genealogy first to get back a few more generations before doing the DNA test, though.


If you haven't already done so, I recommend posting what you know of your family tree on our pedigree forum.  All pedigrees posted on that page will be transfered to the surname project website, so that other researchers may find you and contact you:
http://www.wfnforum.net/index.php?topic=2867.0

If you want to see the pedigrees and results of other researchers, please go to the project website.  You may find other researchers already working on the same family lines that you are:
http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/h/harrison

Also, here is a direct link if you want to go ahead and order a DNA test.  Keep in mind that even folks that are not direct paternal/maternal decendants of this line can still get tested.  To do so, find a relative who IS a direct decendant and sponsor their test for them.  We provide comparison for test results for our project members on our surname websites, and you can use FamilyTreeDNA or Y-search to do a global comparison match (over 1/2 million DNA tests for genealogy have been conducted so far):
http://www.familytreedna.com/DNAList.asp?Group=Harrison

Also, please check out our website if you want to learn more about DNA testing and genealogy at:
www.worldfamilies.net