This book contains articles about numerous North American Rankin families, most of which arrived during the Colonial era. It includes an article on the Rankin DNA Project, which groups Rankins into lineages based on both Y-DNA results and traditional "paper" research. The research is extensively documented with citations to original county records and secondary sources. A full name index provides separate groupings for battles, cemeteries, churches, counties, military units, towns, and waterways.