The Casey Surname DNA Project

Lately I've been considering the growth rate of our surname project. The benefits to all of us in searching our genealogy by DNA will increase exponentially as the number of participants in our project grows. Among the FTDNA surname projects in the letter 'C', there are 123 Campbells, 117 Carters, 145 Crows... heck, they've got 35 Crunks! But here we are, still with less than 10 participants in the Casey Project. Surely we can do better!

I'd like to suggest a New Year's Resolution for each of us. In 2006, resolve to try and recruit a new member to our project. It may not be easy. It's likely the Casey's you are most familiar with are immediate family members, and if your own DNA has already been tested, then getting someone with a known connection to you into the project may seem to offer little benefit. But what about other Casey's you have come across in your own family search? How many connections have you made with Caseys that didn't pan out. It could still well help others in this project if you could reach out to them and suggest they join. Or if you have a Casey-related web site, do you link to this site and encourage your Casey visitors to join?

I don't know what a reasonable goal is. According to the 1990 Census, Casey ranked as the 479th most common surname in the United States. It can't be too ambitious of us to say we'll try and grow the participation in this project to 25 in 2006. If we all make some effort at recruitment, we will all benefit from the results.