The Shapiro (also SPIER/SPEAR/SPEYER) Family Project is open to all who are interested in working together to find their common heritage through sharing of information and dna testing. All variant spellings are welcome. If your Surname is missing and should be included, we'll be glad to add it. Please visit our website and add your family to the Patriarch Page. The name Shapiro or Speyer can be traced back to Shabtai Klonimus [SPIRA-SHAPIRA] who was born around 1285 in Rome. His son was born around 1315 in the German town of Speyer in the Pfalz. His grandson Samuel married into the famous TREVES line. This SPIRA/SPEYER/SHAPIRA family also can be traced to the and the famous talmudist Rashi who was born in Troyes, France in 1040. So hopefully at some point in the future, DNA will help identify these famous line with their DNA haplogroup! There also were several different SPEYER lines that lived as early as the 15th Century in Frankfurt. These SPEYER are also related to the SPEYER family of Hamburg and certainly must connect to many other lines throughout the Ashkenazi world. Famous rabbinical lines had surnames much earlier than other Jewish families and so even though it appears that there are way too many people for the various lines to all be related, I hope to disprove this through DNA. As evidence of this notice that the SPIER of Merzhausen, Hessen have several DNA matches with other SHAPIRA in the project. I can only imagine how far back we'll have to go to find their common ancestor!! It is my hope to take advantage of the famous Shapira and Speyer families that have well documented pedigress so we can find the "holy grail" for many other Shapira, Speyer, Spier, etc!! DNA is wonderful in giving us a blue print back along our direct male line and can even give us some sense of approximately when we connect to those on our match list. But DNA can't fill in the names of the ancestors along the way. So PLEASE send me information on your oldest known ancestors so we can make a database of all of our families. I also require that you fill in the information on your "oldest known ancestor with place and date of birth". This is the information that people will see when they look at the public website. So it is very important for others to see!