The Hathcock DNA Study was founded in 2004 by Paul LaMarr Hathcoat to determine the relatedness of the Hathcock/Hathcoat/Heathcock surname and its many variant spellings. Paul died in 2019. He left an enduring legacy. He recruited many of the early testers and paved the way for the future growth of the project.

In 2010 Clayton Heathcock Jr. joined Paul as co-administrator of the project and he assumed the role of sole administrator upon Paul's death in 2019. In 2022, Clayton recruited Lisa Marley as administrator and Fay Clark as co-administrator. Later, Marcus Norton was recruited as a second co-administrator.  All of us descend from our common Hathcock ancestor, SK717, albeit through different routes.

Origin of the Hathcock Surname  It has been widely accepted, mainly due to the exhaustive work in the 1960s-1980s by family genealogist Douglas Wilburn Hathcock, that the surname came to America in the person of 21-year old Thomas Hathcock, who was imported by William Stone as an indentured servant. We know that Thomas came from Gravesend, England on a ship named Paule and that he arrived in Virginia in the summer of 1635. We do not know more about Thomas Hathcock (spelled Hatcock in the original document that records his entry). In fact, the next people by the name for which there are extensive records are Edward Hathcock and Joseph Hathcock, both born about 1700. Edward and Joseph lived near each other, one on each side of the state line that separated Virginia from North Carolina. They were likely (step) grandsons or great grandsons of the immigrant Thomas Hathcock. All of the modern American Hathcocks (or variant spellings) trace their lineage back to either Edward of Joseph Hathcock.

Our Haplogroup Scientists also use the term "haplogroup" which means a group of similar haplotypes that define a genetic population. In other words, a population that is descended from a common ancestor, as evidenced by a specific "single nucleotide polymorphism" (SNP). There are many haplogroups and each has its own scientific notation. Many of the Hathcoat/Hathcock surname group members have been tested for SNP and our haplogroup is E1b1a, sometimes called E-M2. The following definition of this haplogroup is taken from Wikipedia:

Haplogroup E1b1a is the main haplogroup in sub-Saharan Africa, where it reaches frequencies of over 80% in West Africa. It has been hypothesized that E1b1a originated in Northern Africa and then spread to sub-Saharan Africa with the Bantu expansion. E1b1a is the single most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among people of Sub-Saharan African descent both inside and outside of Africa. It is observed at frequencies of 58%-60% in African Americans. So, although Edward and Joseph probably got their Hathcock surname in the normal patrilineal way from the immigrant Thomas Hathcock, it appears that they may not have inherited their Y-chromosomes from him.

Modern English Heathcock DNA Profile One possibility is that the immigrant Thomas Hathcock who presumably brought the surname to Virginia from England also brought the African haplotype. After all, there were Africans in England in 1600s, so maybe immigrant Thomas Hathcock was mulatto. To test this possibility, three modern English Heathcocks were recruited to our project. Their Y-DNA profile is quite different from that of the American Hathcocks and others with similar spellings of the surname. These three European Heathcocks live in different parts of England, do not know each other, and do not have a known, close family connection. They have the same Y-DNA profile (haplogroup R-M269) and presumably represent the English Heathcock family modal. So it is likely (but not proven, that the immigrant Thomas Hathcock also had Y-DNA that was haplogroup R-M269).

Ancestral Haplotype (Family Modal) If Thomas Hathcock brought the surname to America, but not the DNA, then where did it come from? In using DNA for the study of evolution, scientists use the term "haplotype" to describe a unique DNA sequence. Thus, what is called the "family modal" could also be called "the ancestral haplotype." Similarly, each of the men in our surname group who differ from this ancestral haplotype can be said to have a slightly different haplotype. In our project, for each of the 111 loci but one there is a clear consensus in that every single participant has the same number of repeats, or else only one or two men differ from the main pattern. The one exception is marker #92, Y-GGAAT-1B07. At this locus 25 of the 35 men who have tested to this level have 11 repeats and 10 have 12 repeats. We believe that these two ancestral haplotypes represent descendants of Edward or Joseph Hathcock, as discussed above.

This suggests that, in some way that will probably never be known, an African man contributed the Y-DNA that those of us in our surname group all share and the son of this paternal event must have been raised with the Hathcock surname. We believe that this must have occurred very early, probably in the middle 1600s, as there still are virtually no American Hathcocks who do not have the general family haplotype.

Other Surnames The project group includes a number of men with names other than Hathcock or an obvious variant. In a few cases, we have a very good idea how these men came to have Hathcock Y-DNA but another surname.

• For example, the Nortons trace their ancestry back to James Norton, who married Martha Hathcock in the early 1700s. Martha was the daughter of Edward Hathcock, from whom many of the Hathcocks and Hathcoats trace their descent. We believe that Martha and James adopted a child named Isham who may have been an orphan son of one of her brothers and raised him with the Norton surname. As expected, the Nortons have a value of 11 at the Y-GGAAT-1B07 marker.
  
  
• Another case we understand to some extent is Alfred Wayne Smith, of Roanoke, Texas. Alf was born out of wedlock and his mother never told him the name of his father. Alf knew that his original birth certificate gave his name as "Alfred Junior Parish" (his mother was Juanita Parish) and he had always suspected that his father might have been named Alfred. When his DNA results showed that his profile is virtually identical with the family modal, we did some internet sleuthing and discovered that when Alf was born, in Dunklin Co MO, there was a nearby Heathcock family who had five sons, including one named Alfred Wheeler Heathcock. We are pretty sure that this was Alf Smith's father. Although Alfred Wheeler Heathcock had passed away by the time we identified him as the Alf Smith's likely father, Alf was eventually able to make contact with a living member of the family who confirmed that there was a family tradition that Alfred Wheeler Heathcock had fathered an illegitimate child when he was young. We can trace Alfred Wheeler Heathcock's lineage back to a John Heathcock who lived in Lincoln and then Gibson County Tennessee around 1800, but we have not been able to identify his father. However, since Alf Smith has a value of 11 at the Y-GGAAT-1B07 marker, we know that he is descended from Edward Hathcock, not from Joseph Hathcock.
  
  
• A similar case is Earl Williams, who traces his lineage back to Franklin Randolph Dixon, who was born out of wedlock to Cleopatra Dixon in 1858. His descendants were all aware of this fact but none ever knew the identity of his father. Once again, a bit of internet sleuthing revealed that there was a Heathcock family in the small village where Cleopatra Dixon lived in 1858.   That family was Stanford and Sarah Hathcock and in 1858 they had an 18-year-old son named Franklin Hathcock. There is a good chance that Franklin Hathcock was the father of Cleopatra Dixon's son, Franklin Dixon Randolph. Thus, Earl's pedigree traces rather confidently back to Stanford Hathcock.