First of all, I owe a great debt to my grandfather Demus C. Kizer who in 1968 sparked my interest in genealogy by sharing his stories about growing up in rural Arkansas during the early 1900s.  I was 11 years old at the time, and was fascinated hearing about all of the different families and how they were connected.  I immediately started writing to my relatives, sent away for census records and Civil War pension files and have kept going ever since. My dear grandmother Ruth (Shambarger) Kizer (Demus's wife) was a great-granddaughter of Elizabeth B. (Harper) Head (#2127).

Eventually I reached a roadblock.  I knew that Elizabeth B. (Harper) Head and her husband Willis R. Head were married in Butts County, Georgia in 1829, but was unable to find either of their parents. Then in the late 1980s, when I was living near Fort Worth, Texas, I got in touch with Mary (Head) Ground (of Fort Worth), a first-cousin of my grandmother. Mary had recently heard from another Head relative who found the family Bible of Willis and Elizabeth Head. It contained the family groups of Willis Head's parents as well as Elizabeth Harper's parents! Both families had migrated from Albemarle-Orange Counties in north-central Virginia to Elbert County in eastern Georgia in the 1790s. After that wonderful find, I met several others who were researching the genealogy of the Harper family and provided me with a good deal of the information that has gone into this Harper web page.

I visited Bill Coup (#21264942), of Boca Raton, Florida, on 19 March 1987. (I remember because it was my 30th birthday.) Bill had done a lot of research on his branch of the Harper family, and was able to provide me a good deal of additional information on the Harper background as well as to put me in touch with other researchers, including Ann (Clark) Holloman, of Albany, Georgia (with whom I corresponded during that time). Together with Chandler Eavenson, Jim Landrum, Ann (Harper) Bonner, and others who were researching associated families, we were able to piece together genealogies of the Castleton Harper, Jeremiah White, and Benjamin Head families of central Virginia that migrated to eastern Georgia and intermarried there.

The advent of the Internet and various online services like Ancestry.com has made a tremendous difference in helping researchers find each other, collaborate, and share information.

This Harper web page would not have been possible without the contribution of over a hundred other researchers over many years.  During my 39+ years of research, I have tried to carefully document the primary sources of each piece of information in my database in order to validate the extensive research done by myself and many others.  I continue to be amazed and gratified at the sense of teamwork displayed by other genealogists I have met.  Hopefully this compilation will help others now and in the future to carry on the work that has been done so far.
 

 Mark B. Arslan