The de Kime family were one of the most important knightly families in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in the 12th and 13th centuries, holding over 30 knight's fees at one time and making them more important than many tenants-in-chief. Although the family name continues, there is no study of their DNA, and this project hopes to correct that.

Descended from the Domesday person, Anschetill, who was a tenant of Kolswein of Lincoln, the Kimes were major tenants of the Bishop of Durham and the fees of Aincourt, Gant, Hai, Brus, Curci, Percy and Romare.

The first person in the family to consistently use Kime/Kyme as a surname was Philip de Kime (c1130-c1194) Anschetill was his grandfather. The surname is taken from the place known as South Kyme in southern Lincolnshire.

In this project we hope to do the following:

1. Take a survey of the various Y-chromosome signatures from Kime/Kyme men.
2. Attempt to determine the historical Y-chromosome signature of the family.
3. Determine what other families the Kimes were related to in Lincolnshire and beyond. For example, we know that a Simon FitzSimon (de Kyme) held fees Ireland in 1174. The Kimes were vassals of the Courcy family, and John de Courcy had a FtizSimon among his followers in 1177. Could this family been the ancestors to at least some of the Fitzsimmons of Ireland?
4. They were almost certainly Normans, and we would like to discover whether they had Viking roots, Frankish or some other deep ancestry.

If you are a Kime or Kyme male with known or probable English/British ancestry, then please join us to discover your Kime ancestry and heritage!!!

For more detailed information about the early ancestry of this important family, please see these pages:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=ann_blomquist&id=I47948