Select Harris Miscellany



Here are some Harris stories and accounts over the years:


Harris DNA

The majority of Harrises tested so far belong to R1b1 (Western European) or I1 (Scandinavian) haplogroups. Some Harrises were also found to have E3 (African), J (Middle Eastern/Mediterranean), and R1a (Eastern European) haplogroups.  R1b1 originates from all over Britain.  But I1 is mainly to be found in East Anglia and the northeast of Scotland where there were Danish settlements.

The Harris surname project was one of the largest DNA surname projects undertaken, with almost 300 participating.

Harrises in Essex

Some Harrises from Essex claim to derive their surname from the French term le herisse. The original name had been a nickname, Crispin, from the Latin meaning “sticking-up hair.”  The French translation of Crispin is le herisse.  There was a Crispin de Bec so nicknamed and his son, Guy "Le Herisse" de Bailleul was perhaps the first to assume the French translation of the name.

Branches of this family were said to have migrated to Britain and were known as de Heriz and Heris in the 12th century.


Harries, Tregwynt and Buried Treasure

The story started in 1996 at Tregwynt Mansion, not far from Fishguard in Pembrokeshire, where the owners were building a tennis court.  As they levelled the site and removed the topsoil, a few coins were uncovered. As more soil was removed, more coins were found.  After a few days 87 silver and gold coins had been uncovered dating from the 16th and 17th centuries.  Further searching, helped by a hired JCB, brought the grand total to 33 gold and 467 silver coins, fragments of pottery, a sheet of lead, and a gold ring! 

The latest coin to be discovered was a single shilling bearing a sceptre, in use in 1647 and 1648.  Thus the hoard was thought to be buried no earlier than 1647. 


The occupier of Tregwynt at that time was Llewellin Harries, an important farmer who died in 1663 and who had at least twelve children.  As the hoard was buried in a pot covered by a lead sheet in an outbuilding, it suggests that one of the family was probably involved in its burial.   In the confused times of the Civil War then almost anything may have been possible.  There was some evidence that these Harries were Royalists and this may have been their hoard to be kept away from the rampaging Roundheads.   


John Harris, Father and Son, and Harrisburg

The first John Harris, born in 1673 in Yorkshire of Welsh parents, emigrated to America late in the 17th century.  He came with little money but he began to improve his fortune through contracts to clear land and open streets in the city of Philadelphia.  In so doing, he formed a firm and lifelong friendship with Edward Shippen, its first mayor. 

He received a trader's licence in 1705 to "seat himself on the Susquehannah" and "to erect such buildings as are necessary for his trade and to enclose and improve such quanties of land he shall see fit."  At first a roving trader, he eventually established a trading post at a spot on the Susquehannah where an existing Indian village existed and where dozens of Indian trails intersected.  He also started a ferry across the Susquehannah and acquired the land adjecant to his ferry.

He became known for his dealings with the Indians: 

"On one occasion a band of Indians came into his house and asked for rum.  Seeing that they were already intoxicated, he feared mischief and refused.  They became enraged, seized, him, and tied him to a mulberry bush to burn him.  Luckily he was, after a struggle, released by other Indians in the neighborhood.   In remembrance of this event, he afterward directed that on his death he should be buried under this mulberry tree."

When he died in 1748, his son John - said to have been the first white child born west of the Conewago hills - took over the management of the trading post and built on higher ground a plantation of three farms and a family home.    

At the end of the Revolutionary War, there was agitation among the newer settlers of Pennsylvania for the creation of new counties.  John Harris was instrumental in the establishment of Dauphin County in 1785 and in the location of a new county seat "near Harris's Ferry."  The Government accepted his proposal to lay out a new town, which was to be called "Harrisburg."


Richard Harris from Limerick

Hartstonge House is a tall narrow townhouse with no garden standing alone on Hartstonge Street towards the park.  It had been the home, in the late 1800's, of a wealthy Harris family who had owned Harris's bakery on Henry Street. 

Fifty years later this family was not so wealthy.  Ivan Harris had once been a well-to-do flour mill owner, but had fallen on hard times.  He and his wife Mildred brought up eight children in near-poverty. 

The fifth of these children was Richard, later to be the celebrated actor and hell-raiser.  Regarding his Irish birth, British residency, and well-deserved drinking reputation, he once commented: "When I'm in trouble, I'm an Irishman.  When I turn in a good performance, I'm an Englishman."  Following years of drug abuse and decades of heavy boozing, Richard Harris finally gave up drinking in 1982. 

He died in 2002.  Five years later, a statue of Richard Harris was erected on Bedford Row in Limerick.  It depicts him in the role of King Arthur.  The statue when erected proved to be controversial, just like its subject!



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