My background:

These pages grew out of a long term interest in one of the more traceable surnames in my family tree. As a relatively rare name it was somewhat easier to trace, albeit rather prone to extreme variations in spelling in earlier records.
See my web pages for my particular RUNCIMAN family.

How things grew:

Over time my interest expanded, so I set up the DNA project to prove some family rumours (partially done), and see how other families may have related. Initially they didn't, but that changed in 2010 with excellent matches between three previously believed to be distinct lines.
There are still several other main lines out there waiting to find willing representatives, and (see the Wanted! pages, and do please join us).

What happened next:

The next natural extension was therefore to create an official RUNCIMAN Surname One Name Study (ONS). And so this web site was born.
GOONS registration for the surname was accepted Jan 2010.

And what should happen now:

Anyone with extracted data to include or published pedigrees they wish these pages to link too is welcome to get in touch and help make these pages a useful resource for the surname.
Many of the links and data from the late Steve GIBBS' RUNCIMAN introductory pages have been included here.
(Steve was the administrator for the Rootsweb RUNCIMAN Surname Mailing List. I adminstered the companion Message Board, and have taken over the Mailing List admin as well.)

What you can find here:

The data included on this site, unless exlicitly stated to the contrary, is my own research, with the help of other researchers acknowledged in the source citations.
So any errors are of my own making, and should be brought to my attention using the contact email in each footer.

Follow project progress via the ONS Diary link above right.

Abbreviations:

In general, for people and their related places, events will show placenames abbreviated using Chapman Codes.
Research for an area is intended to be concentrated under a heading for that area, and County and Country names in capitals, eg RUNCIMAN FIF(SCT).

Companion sites

There are a growing number of RUNCIMAN trees/individuals being entered on the wonderful, free, resource WikiTree.
You will notice links from entries in the Lineages section to the appropriate equivalent there.
We like WikiTree both because it is free, likely to last longer than these pages, collaborative, so information should improve over time as connections are made, and has great DNA links to show who is likely to be interested in DNA tests already undertaken.

In addition, the long promised companion site where registered users may upload (and thus control) their own trees has finally become more than a twinkle in my eye.
As RUNCIMAN is a registered project with the Guild of One Name Studies, I have taken advantage of their hosted members web sites.
The rationale is that, as above for WikiTree, the sites so hosted are likely to be around longer than my pay-for hosting at LornaHen.com, and that they provide a service to the genealogical community by maintaining "Legacy" sites should a member no longer be able to maintain them. The data is therefore not lost (as Steve Gibbs' mostly was.)
The site there was created during the Trial period, but no sooner had I created the site, and updated this About page, than the Guild announced that the trial was going live.
The analysis section of this website may be transferred to this latter site instead.

I have begun loading some of the RUNCIMAN lineages to there.
You now can upload yours (and easily refresh it) by requesting a user account.

The technical bits:

Although sharing a single menu set, the site is actually divided into two sections, analysis and lineages.
One is driven from my One Name Study analysis database, the other from my lineage database where I have recorded my researches undertaken over many, many years.
I use The Master Genealogist as my genealogy software of choice, and generate these pages using the companion product SecondSite.
The companion Guild of One Name Studies site mentioned above is in TNG, but has to be in the standard product without some of the nice bells and whistles available to those with access to the actual database and file structures.
 
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