Our project was initiated by administrators Ed Ratliff and Michael Radcliff, both from the United States, who dedicated significant effort to gathering hereditary data from Radcliffe family members. Since they started, advancements in hereditary research, especially Y-DNA testing, have offered valuable insights when combined with detailed family trees. This has helped us gain a better understanding of the origins and migrations of Radcliffe families. John and Michael’s decades of data collection reveal that Radcliffe families descend from multiple lineages in England, dating back 500 years, and more recently in Ireland. We also have data on descendants who migrated to the United States as early as the 1600s, as well as those who later moved to other countries. The Radcliffe Project is especially interested in adding members with more recent English ancestry.  It is helpful, but not essential, if we have information from members with well-documented family trees that can trace back several centuries.

Our numbers are growing as more members join. If you are a direct male descendant of the Radcliffe family, we invite you to take a Y-DNA test and join our project. The Y chromosome is passed from father to son, so ifyou are male and your father’s surname is Radcliffe (any spelling), you qualify as a direct Radcliffe descendant. This helps us trace our families back to their earliest ancestors. By comparing the Y-DNA results of our members, we can better place new members within the Radcliffe family lines and identify gaps in our family history. 

Once Y-DNA results are available, some members join our project because their DNA matches the Radcliffe family line, even though their surnames do not. These cases are known as Non-Paternal Events (NPEs), which occur when a person's paternal ancestry differs from their recorded surname—either recently or many generations ago. Situations like this are common and can occur for various reasons.