Charles and Jean HAMEL, two brothers, immigrated from France to Quebec about 1656. This surname project is primarily focused on their many descendants who spread over Canada and the US. There were few, if any, additional Hamel immigrants until probably the late 1800's. So if you are a Hamel, the chances are one of these brothers was your immigrant ancestor. The spelling of HAMEL has, of course changed in many lines. Some lost the H and became Amell or Amel. Some, perhaps wanting to seem more "English" in origin, became Hamill. One we know of became Hammond. The duHamel name may also be the same family, at least sometimes, but this is uncertain. We have included all of these variation of HAMEL in our list of project surnames along with their likely misspellings. The Hamill surname, with that specific spelling, seems to usually be of English or Irish origin. There is a HAMILL surname project whose members tend to represent those Hamill lines. Also, there are Hamel lines whose origin is German or Dutch rather than French. People who may be Hamels (of any spelling or origin) are welcome to join this HAMEL surname project. In fact, this may be where they learn the origin of their Hamel.. Hamill... Amell... name! We are just getting started as a project under the auspices of FTDNA, and it will take a while to get everything up and running here. But, a number of HAMELs have been working together for several years on a more informal basis. We are looking forward to being able to use this surname project to share what we have learned, recruit new members, and help each other with our family history research. As one way to synthesize what we learn from our DNA and traditional research we plan to build a Hamel family tree that attempts to connect the Hamel ancestors of project members. And we expect that autosomal DNA tests like Family Finder will play a role in developing that Hamel tree. This should be of particular help to Hamel descendants who are not descended from the immigrant Hamel brothers by a strictly male line.