Acknowledgements

Tracing a family's roots, especially the early parts of it, is a lot like a murder mystery. You find lots of clues and perhaps circumstantial evidence in all sorts of places, from hard-to-read handwritten notes in family bibles to grave markings in old cemeteries, to the vast expanse of the Internet. In some cases, the earlier work of others who have sought their family roots becomes available in some form or another, and on rare occasions a professional historian's special expertise verifies some already established information, discovers previously unknown facts, and discards unverified or erroneous data that may have been passed down generation to generation with little or no basis in fact.

Such is the case with the Harness family that is the focus of this web site. The information collected here represents the combined efforts of literally dozens of people over many years. Most are simply ordinary people wiho have had an interest in finding their family roots, while others are professional researchers.

For those interested primarily in basic family tree information (ancestry, kinship, relationships) we invite you to view (or download) the family tree found elsewhere on this site. But there is much more to a family than mere statistical information, and that is what this section of our site is all about. Who were these people and what were their lives like? What were the circumstances of the period of history in which they lived and where they lived? Where did they come from?

This section of our site attempts to tell the story, or as much as we know of it, about each segment of the Harness family down through the years, from Joachim Ernst Kraft Horner and his family, who lived in a small village near 18th century Heidelberg, Germany, and arrived in America in 1710 as a part of the massive Palatine emigration, to the modern day Harness families scattered across the United States. As you will see, most of the early Harness' (late 1600's through 1900) were farmers, first in Germany, and after coming to America in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

We hope you enjoy reading about the Harness family covered on this site. Where possible, we provide hyperlinks to other sites where you may find additional pertinent information or background on specific subjects mentioned.

Acknowledgements

Information on this web site was obtained from numerous sources, including but not limited to the following individuals listed in no particular order:

William H. Rice
The county clerks and other county officials in Hardy County, WVA and Greene and Fayette County, Ohio
John Tevebaugh
Helen Little-Ritenour
Gerald Harness
Harold Duncan Harness
Helen L. Harness
Helen Black
Rick Brown
Simeon Miller Bright
Lorine McGinnis Schulze
Henry Robert Burke
Charles Harness
Thomas Harness
Henry Z. Jones Jr.
Karl Diefenbacher
The Virginia State Library and Archives