PROJECT INTRODUCTION

The Lemon Family DNA Project seeks to use DNA analysis to enable Lehman, Lemon, Laymen, et al., families to determine if they share a common ancestor with other Lemon families.   For ease of developing this page, I have chosen my family name “Lemon” to describe the project. Please be assured that this project is for all derivatives of the name (Lemon, Lemons, Lemmon, Lemmons, Lemond, Lemonds, Le Mond, Le Mon, Leming, Liming, Lehman, Layman, etc.)

The project will:

• Develop a table of genetic patterns of all Lemon Families so that Lemon researchers can determine whether their families have a common ancestor with other Lemon families
• Encourage Lemon researchers to submit DNA samples.
• Share the results with all participants in the project and make the results publicly available on the internet with appropriate considerations for privacy of participants 

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TAKING THE DNA SAMPLE

Participants joining the project are sent a DNA kit in the mail.  The kit includes a 2 swabs that the participant rubs (pretty hard) along the inside of each cheek for 60 seconds.  Then the swab is placed in a vial and then in an envelope and mailed to the lab.  That’s all it takes. 

Within 6 to 8 weeks the results will be available on the particpants FTDNA account. Each result is compared to all the other results on the database for matches. On your FTDNA account page there will be several buttons. To see your matches click on the match button.

One thing you will see is that there are matches that are not your surname. These are there because the Y-DNA markers tested do not mutate over time, and can show matches back to 1000 years ago. This was before records and surnames existed. These man with different surnames are from that period of time, and are considered not genealogically significant.    

BigY700 tests are recommended with a corresponding autosomal (FF) test.

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OTHER LEMON SURNAME DNA PROJECTS

The first DNA project for the Lemon surname was administered by Steve Laymon. It was done at the Oxford Ancestors lab in England.  He has a lot of excellent Lemon/Laymon data posted on his website at http://home.lightspeed.net/~slaymon/. He has agreed to allow us to publish his lab results here as well.

The second project was started here at FTDNA in 2000.

The Lehmann project was created by Earl Layman who did extensive research in his Layman/Lehmann tree that descends from 1717 immigrant Peter Leman who settled in East Lampeter Twp. in Lancaster County.  It was merged here after he no longer could be an admin.  Members are eternally grateful for all his diligent and meticulous work.