Project Goals
The goals of the project are: 1) to help living descendants prove their "on paper" genealogies; 2) to uncover the origins and relationships of surname RASEY and its many variations, especially 3) to determine whether the two major New England progenitors, Joseph RAZEE I and Joseph RASEY I, could be father and son; and 4) to answer the question once and for all as to whether Joseph RASEY truly was a descendant of the MACLEODS of the Isle of Raasay.
Update: Goal 4 has been achieved! Test results of a descendant of Joseph RASEY I show there is no recent connection between him and Clan MACLEOD, over 100 members of which have been tested for the MACLEOD project. Our subject is Haplogroup I1b2a, while the MACLEODs descended from Leod, Chief I, are Haplogroup R1b, so they cannot have shared a common ancestor for tens of thousands of years.
Further Update: Goal 3 has been achieved! A genetic distance of 18 (29/37 or 54/67) indicates there is not a close relationship between progenitors Joseph RAZEE I and Joseph RASEY I of New England, so the former could not have been the father of the latter. That they are the same haplogroup subclade may be coincidental or may indicate they have a common ancestor further back.