{"id":13,"date":"2014-12-28T00:35:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T00:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawsondna.org\/home\/?page_id=13"},"modified":"2026-03-27T15:32:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:32:03","slug":"the-lawson-dna-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lawsondna.org\/home\/the-lawson-dna-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lawson DNA Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome To The Lawson Surname DNA Project<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Gayle (Ellison) Merz, who has a Lawson ancestress, initiated the project in May of 2003. Carl L. Lawson\u00a0volunteered as co-administrator in 2006. Carl is now the administrator and maintains our website, with Gayle as our co-administrator. The project includes the various spelling of the surname Lawson, such as Lausen and Losson. We do have other surname members who believe they have some connection with the Lawson surname and are trying to make the connection.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h3>\n

At one time or another most of us have had a desire to know about our origins and where our Lawsons came from.\u00a0 Many of us join the quest early in life and others may have put it off until our later years, but sooner or later it gets to all of us.\u00a0 We collect data from parents and grandparents, bibles, birth certificates, courthouses, libraries and now we use the Internet.\u00a0 However, it seems many of us always come to what has been referred to as our \u201cbrick wall\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now we have a new tool, DNA testing, that may help in connecting to other Lawsons and maybe help push back the \u201cbrick wall\u201d one or two generations.\u00a0 We still need to do the above detective work to capture as much information on our families and build our pedigree or ancestral charts before moving on to the DNA testing.\u00a0 As you work at collecting the data, you may find that the records that would otherwise connect your ancestors may be lost, destroyed or otherwise absent.\u00a0 This is when DNA becomes invaluable in re-connecting individuals, surnames and families.\u00a0 Hopefully this is when you will decide to join our Lawson DNA Project to find a way around this \u201cbrick wall\u201d.<\/p>\n

Statistical information about the Lawson population from the Lawson International Registry, done in 1996, estimated a total population of Lawsons to be 113,650 in the United States, with Tennessee having the largest population of Lawsons.<\/p>\n

Great Britain was next with a population of 42,830, then Australia with 9,541 and Canada with 7,691, to name the top countries.\u00a0 The Registry showed Lawsons in 15 countries and they may not have found them all and only used the spelling of Lawson.<\/p>\n

Goal Of The Project<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Our objective is a standard surname project, where we hope to connection those of us with the surname of Lawson or it\u2019s various spelling.\u00a0 We believe that there are a number of clusters of Lawsons that share a common ancestor.\u00a0 By grouping the various lines of Lawsons in a database by their Y-chromosome DNA signature and then comparing their submitted pedigrees, we hope to be able to make additional connections for our families and push back the \u201cbrick walls\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gayle had this in mind when she picked her goal for our project: –
\n\u201cThe main goal of this project is to sort out all of the Lawsons, Lausens and Lossons all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a great undertaking and since the largest numbers of Lawsons are in the United States, this is where we started.\u00a0 We have added members from Great Britain and Australia and we hope to add more.<\/p>\n

The Plan<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For our Project the Y-chromosome DNA testing needs to be done by a male with the surname of Lawson or one of the other spellings.\u00a0 The Y-chromosome is only carried by males and is passed down from father to son and follows the paternal line.\u00a0 If you are a female researcher of a Lawson line, then you will need to get a brother, father, uncle or cousin with the surname of Lawson to take the test for you.<\/p>\n

Since the start of our Project we have had a number of members with a surname other than Lawson make a request to join our Project.\u00a0 These members may have had a non-paternity event, a situation where through adoption, a name change, an illegitimacy, or any combination of these, their ancestors did not have the genetic profile that they expect in their surname project and through the public data bases or through FamilyTreeDNA they found that they may be a close match to one of our Lawson lines.\u00a0 We have no problems including them in our Project and they should contact\u00a0