Birth Name: Samuel Benjamin Harris
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, United States
Date of Birth: April 9, 1967
Ethnicity:
*English, at least 1/128 Scots-Irish (Northern Irish) (father)
*Ashkenazi Jewish (mother)
Sam Harris is an American neuroscientist, author, and philosopher.
Sam is the son of actor Berkeley Harris (Elliott Berkeley Harris, Jr.) and producer Susan Harris (born Susan Spivak). His father was a Quaker. His mother was Jewish. Sam had a secular upbringing, and is a prominent atheist.
Sam’s paternal grandparents were Elliott Berkeley Harris, Sr. (the son of Lewis Henry Harris and Gertrude Elizabeth Brown) and Rebecca Wilson Land (the daughter of Willian Raines Land, Sr. and Mary Gregory LeGrande). It is likely that most of Sam’s father’s ancestry was English. Only one of Sam’s paternal ancestors can be traced back beyond the United States, his paternal second great-grandmother, Abigail Blackburn, who was born in Loughgall, Northern Ireland. The surname “LeGrande” is French, which might indicate some French ancestry.
Sam’s maternal grandparents were Benjamin D. Spivak and Bertha M. Schneider (the daughter of Samuel Schneider and Anna Bradman). Samuel was born in Russia. Anna was born in Warsaw, Poland.
Sources: Genealogy of Sam Harris (focusing on his father’s side) – http://www.geni.com
Genealogy of Sam Harris (focusing on his mother’s side) – http://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com