Our aims are:

1. to reconstruct all the family trees of everyone who bears, or who has ever bourne, any of our variant surnames; and

2. to write and publish that history in a way that reflects the social and econonomic changes our ancestors' experienced in their lives.

Focusing originally on England, and specifically on the West Country, the project now covers the entire British Isles, including Ireland, and all countries to which family members have emigrated or spread to during the past four centuries or so. We are tracking the descendants of several hundred emigrants to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, during which process we have also found name bearers in far-flung corners such as Chile and Argentina as well as many European countries.

A traditional genealogical research project starts with the living members of  a family and works backwards in time to rebuild their tree generation by generation. Our project works with a similar methodology, taking each living name-bearer and assigning them to a family and then to a tree, each of which is then researched back generation by generation.

In parallel to this documentary research we are running a DNA testing programme to confirm the accuracy of our reconstructed trees. Almost all of the trees we are tracking have now had at least one descendant DNA tested, and the majority of the major trees have been tested multiple times. You can view a map showing the origins of our trees here. The map is colour coded to indicate the DNA-verified 'genetic families' among the trees; those in white have yet to be DNA tested whilst those in grey have a DNA signature unique within our project.

Milestones

2013:    Proposal for an International Reunion in 2016 marking the 950th anniversary of the Norman Conquest

2011:    New website and blog launched to co-incide with Phase 2 of the research project

2009:    Quarterly Pomerology newsletter replaced by our project blog

2008:    Our DNA project recruits its 100th participant & our website is re-launched

2007:    First online survey of PFA members

2005:    First project 'Annual Report' published for PFA members

2002:    Death of the PFA's founder, Tony Pomeroy

2000:    The second international reunion at Berry Pomeroy, Devon

2000:    Launch of the DNA project & our original website at Rootsweb

1997 :   PFA founded at our first international reunion at Berry Pomeroy, Devon