This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Roper, Rosser Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/kgDBAEB/461.2.1 Message Board Post: You raise a rather fascinating question! There is much confusion between ROPER and ROSSER records, particularly in Brunswick and Campbell county. I have reached teh conclusion that MOST of the suspect ROPER/ROSSER records in Brunswick are actaully ROPERs. One MIGHT be inclined to reach a contrary conclusion in the case of Campbell County, EXCEPT for a few obscure details. First, one of the sons of my ancestor David ROPER (b 1744, d 1808) was married and died in Charlotte, VA, before 1806 but his widow Frances C. Jackson ROPER is KNOWN to have died in Campbell. They had four children. My own ancestor Benjamin Eliscus ROPER married Catharine WIthers PAYNE, of Campbell County, VA, in Clinton, Hinds County, MS, on 17 May 1843. But there is family lore that the ROPERs were already acquainted with the PAYNE family in Campbell before that. There have been a number of very ambiguous ROSYERs, ROSSIERs, ROSSERs and ROPERs living in close proximity from the mid 1600s in Accomack/Northampton, to Rosier's Creek in Northumberland, along the Rappahannock, in Fauquier County, in Prince Georges County, and then later Brunswick and Campbell. I found one ROSSER line from Prince George which traces its roots to a David ROSSER in Charles City County and at least one member of this ROSSER line seems to have qualified for the Sons of the American Revolution based upon the Revolutionary Service of that David ROSSER. But there is one very serious problem with that asserted lineage -- there WERE NO ROSSERS in Charles City County at that time and MY ANCESTOR David ROPER was the individual who furnished the supplies to the Revolutionary Army! My Charles City ROPER line is not only particularly well documented from at least the period of the 1704 Quit Rent Rolls and John ROPER's Patent of 1714, but we also have MATCHED DNA test results from two different lines of descendents of David ROPER -- the line of Rev. David ROPER and the line of Henry C. ROPER (whose family passed through Campbell, VA) -- which matched results ALSO MATCH the ROPER DNA Test results of the other branches of the Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts ROPER families. I have long hoped that a ROSSER test subject would come forward so that we might determine whether the ROSSERs are a genetically distinct family in Virginia or whether they were ROPERs who had lost the spelling of the family name. But I was also much more inclined to believe that the ROSSERs and the ROPERs might be the SAME family during a period when I suspected that the same might be true of North Carolina ROPERs and RAPERs. But this latter theory has now been DISPROVEN through genetic testing. (There are at least two genetically distinct RAPER families of Colonial antiquity in North Carolina.) If you are actually acquainted with or a correspondent of any Campbell ROSSERs, why dont you encourage them to participate in the Roper Y-Chromosome Testing Project: http://www.roperld.com/RoperGenetics.htm