Welcome to the Slaven Genealogy Exchange.

Welcome to the Slaven Genealogy Exchange! Our purpose is to be a central location to collect and exchange information for Slaven, Slevin, Slavin, Slavey, and other surname variations. As a registered one-name study, the scope of this exchange is world wide. We hope there's something here for the beginning genealogist, the old hand, and the merely curious!

What's New?

Pre-Black Friday sales on DNA tests!
AncestryDNA is offering their (autosomal) test for only $59 through November 21. This is a great price-- so does it mean we may see it at $49 or less for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or other holiday sales? It hardly matters; at this price, jump on the sale if you haven't tested or you have siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, or others to test, and get the test back to Ancestry to process before the tens (or hundreds!) of thousands of Christmas gift tests start flooding in!

At this writing (the evening of Nov. 1), the AncestryDNA test purchased through Amazon is priced at $69 (with free two-day shipping with Amazon Prime), rather than $59. If you're a Prime member, you may want to check both the Ancestry website and Amazon before ordering for the most current price. You can also try the coupon code FREESHIPDNA at Ancestry, although usually it's not honored during sales.

UPDATE: Genealogy blogger Thomas MacEntee says that there's a semi-secret special when buying the tests from Ancestry: if you buy four, you get a fifth kit for just the cost of postage. I haven't tried this, but Tom usually is 100% correct on his information.

23andMe has a special on their DNA kit, $69 for one kit, or pay just $49 a kit if you buy two or more. Normally the "ancestry" test runs $99. Their "health + ancestry" package is not on sale ($199 regular price). Sale ends November 23.

Older News.

Even more "cousins" have been added The Slaven Cousins DNA Registry. We're getting a nice grouping of late 19th century County Donegal Slavin/Slevin families. There's no reason we couldn't have similar groupings for other Irish counties, other locations around the world, or branches of a family-- just submit your DNA information, and encourage your matches with Slaven/Slavin/Slevin/etc. ancestry to submit their info!

A couple more "cousins" have been added to The Slaven Cousins DNA Registry, a table of folks who have had autosomal DNA testing done and are looking for matches. If you've had the AncestryDNA test, the FamilyFinder test at FamilyTreeDNA, the Ancestry test at 23andMe, or a similar test at another company, please send me your information so someone Googling one of your ancestors will know that you're out there! Encourage your matches with Slaven, Slavin, Slevin, etc. ancestors to send their information too!

The Y-DNA results pages (basic and expanded) are back, and with them, a new participant-- another John Slavin of County Tyrone/Highland County, Virginia descendant via Isaiah Slavens. Check out the results at the links above.

I've been tweaking the pages so they should load "securely" with the little padlock icon in your browser's address bar. The site doesn't use cookies, doesn't have any login or password required, it's just a simple site. If a page doesn't show the padlock, it's probably because the call to a photo or other graphic on the page isn't being made via https. I'll be looking for such pages over the next few weeks.

Over 60 obituaries and death notices have been added or updated. Find links to them on the Obits page.

We have the first descendant of Richard Harve Slavey/Slaven in the "Slaven Cousins DNA Registry," the listing of folks who have taken an autosomal DNA test from one of the companies and are looking for matches. And we've added another descendant of John Slaven of Highland County, Virginia. I'd like to see more Richard Harve descendants test, along with descendants of John Slaven from Garrard County, Kentucky, and Robert Slaven of Gibson County, Indiana. If, as some suspect, all three lines connect back to William Slaven of Pennsylvania/North Carolina, it's quite possible that a few will show distant cousin matches across the family lines. While that's reachine the limits of autosomal testing, such matches are possible. I have a half-dozen matches with whom the common ancestor is John Slaven of Highland County, a similar distance into the past.

A BOXER'S BALDNESS CURE

What does a less successful boxer, brother of the famed Frank "Paddy" Slavin do at age 65 and too old for the ring? He markets a baldness cure. Thanks to Frank Slavin descendant Nancy Newham for sharing.

About this site

This is a private, noncommercial educational site for the free exchange of information. It is not associated with Ancestry, Rootsweb, MyFamily, or any commercial site. (That means no banner ads, no pop-up or pop-under windows, no unsolicited email!)

All content on this site is believed to be compliant with U.S. copyright law and Fair Use provisions.

Because the site is an outgrowth of my personal research, it's tilted towards the Slavens surname. But that's easily fixed-- contribute your Slavin, Slevin, etc. data for the site! Here are some of the types of information that you can share:

Census transcriptions Census returns can be a gold mine of information for both the beginning and the experienced researcher, but many people don't have easy access to films. Finding your family in a transcription here makes requesting a film or a lookup much more worthwhile, so won't you share? We need people who have access to their state's Soundex indexes and are willing to transcribe the Slaven(s), Slavin, Slevin, etc. entries! It's S415 and you'll see about 20 Sullivans for each Slaven.

Biographies and reminiscences Share the bios from county history books, reminiscences from ancestors, old family letters, your own memories, the family history that was written for a reunion decades ago...

Obituaries Transcriptions of obituaries and death notices.

Photographs Share family photos, or photos of grave sites. Photos continue to be the most popular items on the site.

Links Do you have or know of a family-related site? Does a GenWeb county site offer information on a branch of the family? Share it here!

Other help! Other information that doesn't fit the categories above is also welcome.

All corrections, suggestions, criticisms, etc. are welcome too! Be sure to put Slaven, Slavin, and something meaningful in the subject line-- I get tons of spam so an email with no subject or "Hi!" will probably be deleted unread!

Larry Slavens
7018 Airline Ave.
Des Moines, IA 50322

iarooster@earthlink.net