Welcome to the Website of The Lannin DNA Project. The surname Lannin is a relatively uncommon one.

The first Lannin known to arrive in the New World was James Lannin, a Glover by trade, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1635 on a ship named The Planter. Today Lannins are found in the United States, Canada, Latvia, New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain and, of course, Ireland. Those Lannins aware of their heritage who live elsewhere trace their ancestry back to Ireland. In my branch and others with which I have been in contact, County Cork is the place from which our forefathers came. Others cite County Carlow as a possible location, though even they have Cork ties. An unknown number of Lannins perished in The Great Famine.

Many of our ancestors left during the time of The Great Famine in the mid 19th century. One branch went to Cornwall to work in the mines, only to move halfway around the globe to New Zealand to work in the mines there. Some who sailed to Canada lived there for a while. Some stayed there, especially in Ontario and Quebec, but others (or their descendents) moved south to Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan. Others went directly to the US States of Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, and Even to the Deep South. Later they spread out to Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska and California. Today Lannins live in Tennessee, Florida, Texas and Alabama.

In times gone buy we worked as farmers, teamsters, cobblers and other simple professions.In the current era, many of our family members are doctors and lawyers, journalists and authors, teachers and students, models and bankers, Sales people and real estate brokers, as well as business people and working stiffs.

The historical records since 1850 are very informative as to our ancestors, their families, where they lived and so forth. What is harder to find are the detailed records in Ireland. We know many of us are related, but the precise connections elude us. A few of us have been tested by Family Tree DNA since 2004. We have made contact with each other. Lannin men in the US, New Zealand, England and Ireland have become aware of each other. This is a wonderful result, but only the beginning. Now it is time for males with the Lannin Surname (or its variants) to participate in our Y-DNA testing program in The Lannin DNA Project. It will help us develop a much clearer picture of the extant and genetic relationships of the members of our surname group. We hope that it will help to fill in some of the frustrating genealogical blanks in our family history, and bring us closer together.

Jim Lannin

For the story of my family history, visit Our Family History - The Genealogy of The James and Karen Lannin Family.