This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Roper Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/kgDBAEB/769 Message Board Post: Dear Roper family member: A Roper Union IV (RUIV) meeting will be held in Greenville SC at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on 8-9 October 2005. See the web page http://www.roperld.com/RoperSCMeet2005.htm for information about the meeting. At the RUII & RUIII in Virginia in 2003 and 2004 we had inspirational memorial services, led by Richard Samuel (Dick) Roper, for John Roper of New Kent/Charles City counties VA, who was a prominent member of St. Peter's Church there in the mid 1600s. This time Dick will lead us in a memorial service for John Roper of Norfolk, England who came to Massachusetts in 1637 and started the huge northern USA Roper family. I thought that it was appropriate to celebrate the progenitor of the northern Ropers in this Roper Union IV held in the south, as a sign of the unification of Ropers north and south. Y-chromosome tests (http://www.roperld.com/ropergenetics.htm) have shown that most USA Ropers, southern and northern, are in one big family that I call the Majority USA Roper (MUR) Family. From the Y tests I arranged in Suffolk England last February we have located three Ropers there who are related to MUR; I call this extended family the England/MUR or EMUR family. I and other Roper genealogists in the US and England are working hard now trying to sort out the data for EMUR relatives in Norfolk and Suffolk. We call these meetings Roper Unions, rather than reunions, because most attendees have never met each other. In fact, there have been at least two unrelated Roper families represented at the meetings. We welcome more different Roper families to attend. At minimum we share the Roper surname, if not much genetics. We especially would welcome any English Ropers to come to join us at RUIV. It would help very much in the planning if you would inform me as soon as you can that you plan to attend. I want to thank Gary Trenton Roper for doing the preliminary work in making the arrangements for RUIV. Yours, Dave Roper