Van Riper-Yereance Surname Project Goals:

1. To facilitate research that ultimately identifies the European origins of Jurian Tomasse (see Background):

• ·       Establish baseline Y-DNA data for American Van Riper descendants (i.e., recruit a representative sample of participants);

• ·       Use Y-DNA analysis to identify men who genetically match the American Van Ripers, but who are not descendants of Jurian Tomasse, i.e., men who share a common European ancestor with the American Van Ripers. Because any such a common ancestor would have been born no later than about 1600, matches may not meet FTDNA's screening criteria for Y-DNA matches, and thus may not appear on the Y-DNA match lists of project participants.

• ·       Help explore the ancestry of matching subjects to further the identityof common ancestry.

2. To help identify branches of the American Van Riper family (see Background); and

3. To help identify genetically unrelated family groups that havesimilar surnames, i.e., to present Y-DNA data that conveniently shows thegenetic differences between other family groups (for example, Riper) and ifappropriate, to expand the project focus to include more thorough coverage of thosefamilies.