Hi,

Although not a common surname there are quite a few Greenhills scattered around the world. The original Greenhills must have come from places called Greenhill; according to multimap there are the following five places called Greenhill in Britain:-

Greenhill, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, S8 7
Greenhill, Kilkenneth, Isle of Tiree, Scotland, PA77 6
Greenhill, Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, DG11 1
Greenhill, Falkirk, Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, Scotland, FK4 2
Greenhill, Harrow, Middlesex, England, HA1 1

However, there are other small places such as Greenhill near Cambridge and Greenhill near Rickmansworth, Herts which are not listed on Multimap. Places such as Greenhill, Harrow were actually named after the landowners, who were called Greenhill, and not the other way around.

Unlike a common surname like Smith or Jones, where there are hundreds of separate families, there are probably only a dozen or so different Greenhill families.

I am very curious to find out exactly how many Greenhill families there are and which are related to which. Is there anyone else out there who is also interested? If so, I propose to set up a "Greenhill Surname DNA Project" which I will administer (unless anyone else wants to do it). Basically the science behind this is that males pass on a bit of DNA to their sons (YDNA) which changes extremely slowly over time. Hence, related males can be identified by having nearly identical YDNA. If Greenhills from different lines get tested we will be able to extablish to what extent they are all related. Further info about the science behind this can be found here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname_project

In addition to this, people tested will be able to find out what Haplogroup they belong to, which, put more simply, means they will be able to find out their origins a bit further back in time, i.e, whether they are ancient Britains, Scandinavians, Eastern Europeans, etc. Most people from Britain are ancient Britain or Scandinavian (remnants of the invading Danish vikings), however, the area has seen an influx of refugees and immigrants from Europe for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Some more info about Haplogroups and the two most common British ones (R1b and I1) can be found at:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I1a_(Y-DNA)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_(Y-DNA)

Other potential uses that individuals might find for this project include:-

* discovering living relatives around the world
* proving or disproving theories regarding ancestry
* finding locations for further genealogical research
* validating existing research
* solving "brick walls" in genealogical research
* identifying non-Greenhills to whom you are related from before surnames were used

There are several companies that do the test but unless anyone has any better ideas I propose to use FamilyTreeDNA as I have already used them before and they give group discounts. Their website is at http://www.familytreedna.com/ and if you click on "Projects" and then on a letter you can see how many surname projects are already on the go.

A few examples of surname DNA projects are on the following sites:-

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/greenspan/index.aspx?fix...
http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/h/harrison/results.htm...
http://www.harrisdna.org/results.html


Please let me know your thoughts on this. Hopefully, if a few people are interested we can get this project started and learn a bit more about our past. If you have any further questions please let me know.

Anyway, Best Wishes whatever you decide, and please pass this info on to other Greenhills :-)