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History, Who We Are, and Contact Information

This project originated as a merger of three independent, already established projects that joined efforts for the betterment of all.

Tim Peterman started a Hoar FTDNA group in 2005. His stated goal then was to finally lay to rest the claims of linkage (or not) between the Charles Hoare and Hezekiah Hoar lines of North America. An underlying goal was to see if his research that placed James Horr in the Charles Hoare group was true or was James really in the Hezekiah Hoar group below Robert 3rd and Lavina Hamm as his descendants thought. Tim tested his 4th cousin yDNA STR markers and created the project with that single member. Tim has tested many of his extended family members and runs a large Peterman surname project. He has a large Autosomal DB for near and distant relatives in his lines. This particular Hoar FTDNA group lay dormant for 6 years with Tim's cousin being the only participant. (Note: Tim has since done a nice Autosomal study page / project as well.)

Roz Edson had been helping others research their North American Hoar / Horr surname roots since the early 1990's. Early on she created a merged tree of her discoveries in a rootsweb database (archive.org capture). She included key research by others that expanded on and corrected errors in Norton Horr's seminal book on Hezekiah Hoar. With the start of this joint project, she has started to expand her work into the English history of the surname in 1600's as well.  Roz's efforts are pretty much a one-name study in North America followed by a surname study to put people together into family branches. Unfortunately, we lost Roz to cancer in May 2016. Due to rootsweb being dropped by Ancestry, we have archived her databases here with others at h600.org/gen.

Randy Harr yDNA tested in early 2011 as he hit a roadblock at 1800 on his Patriline using just traditional genealogical research.  Randy had already been building his own Wiki site to catalog his discoveries of the Hoar / Horr / Hoare surname work. This work kept expanding with many patriarch lines and the genetic genealogy technology links as he delved deeper into both areas. (Unfortunately it appears we took the material offline and it was not archived either due to its dynamic page creation. We will attempt to restore key pages for historical reasons. The site split into two: from modiharr.com to mycuz.us and h600.org)

Pulling it all together?  Roz and her database had unknowingly assisted Randy to discover his surname change from Horr to Harr in 1900. But records earlier than 1800 for Randy's line were not forthcoming. Upon yDNA testing, Randy showed a strong match to Gordon Hoard who had extensive research and ties to the Hezekiah Hoar line of North America. Randy joined Tim's Hoar FTDNA group as a place to hang his hat, convince other matches to join, and then work further to understand where his link below Hezekiah to 1800 may lie. Gordon would not join the project until many years later. Gordon and Randy's results were quite distinct from Tim's distant cousin. Randy started collaborating and communicating with others researching these lines; encouraging participation in this DNA project. Roz eventually had her relative tested also and he linked to Randy and Gordon as well. So Randy and Roz started recruiting even harder to get others tested. Roz was offered to co-admin the now expanding FTDNA group with Tim. The three worked to track down and invite many other known researchers of the surname and their descendants. Sometimes with Roz or Tim covering the cost of the test. Randy's web page was quickly outgrowing its capability. The work on modiharr.com was initially transferred to a WorldFamilies project site while the the expansion into a formal new domain and stand-alone site named h600.org was completed over a six month period.

Beside the direct recruits into the project by the team leaders, others started getting tested independently, joined and have introduced new lines. Many were women with Autosomal tests. To better help this expanding crowd, Randy and Tim worked together to figure out how to generalize the comparison and matching work.  Luckily, older more established surname groups had already been attacking the problem so we could mostly adopt their techniques. We are working to incorporate this further into the project now.

Almost all lines, like in previously published research, claimed lineage to the Hore family of Risford Manor in Chagford, Devon, England. So the project has evolved into one of also trying to catalog and distinguish lines that existed in the middle-ages of England. The Risford Manor Hore's are not distinctive in any way. They were simply a family documented for almost 300 years in Devon (1330-1630) in a number of early publications. Similarly, many claim the Risford Manor Hore line is linked back to the Pole Hore line of Wexford, Ireland and a William le Hore of Pembroke, Wales before that. We hope to work and recruit the Banking Hoare's of London into the project as well. They, like many other family lines, claim links to the Risford Manor Hore's and Pole Hore family due to a common armorial seal in use. The goal is to use DNA to assist previous and new research to either tie or distinguish separate lines of the surname through history.

As we expand the project coverage and get more tested, other key individuals have been joining our effort. Malcolm Hoare in England, who has done extensive one-name study work in Gloucester in the 1500's, joined in and has helped us secure the h600.eu and h600.uk domain name as an alias for our project. He is also now managing our membership in the Guild of One-Name Studies (GoONS) that we initiated early on. Malcolm further is our untiring, across the pond researcher who has made tremendous strides in early Virginia records research to explain all the various surname matches to him in the now B009 super-branch that only came about due to DNA analysis.

Since Roz's untimely death, Joyce Selix has taken over maintenance of Roz's rootsweb database covering North America.

Soon after this website was active, a new website popped-up covering work done over the decade or so previous to its launching. The site by David G Hoare was really starting to get integrated with us here when David expired so quickly. We are working to preserve his more unique one-name study work from http://hoareorigins.co.uk here on our site at h600.org/HoareOrigins.

Each Family Branch tends to have an active member and lead.

Randy is mostly based in North Carolina of late and so has planted the flag for this ad-hoc group there.  You can reach us at:

The H600 Project: A Surname Study
323 East Chapel Hill St, PO Box 101
Durham, NC 27702
phone: +44 7441 393 886 (mobile)
(emails can be found on the FTDNA Project Website)

note: the phone line is registered in Reading, England. After all, what is long distance these days? The phone rings on Randy's and possibly Malcolm's mobile phone.  Most often Randy is 5 to 8 hours behind UMT/GMT.  But he could be 0 to 7.5 hours ahead as well. Can you determine where he goes? Best to email one of the admins and schedule a good time to call. Or SMS the mobile number.

You can reach the admins via the email address listed on our FamilyTreeDNA group page for further questions.