Date: Tue,  7 Mar 2006 17:59:57 -0330 (NST)
From: dapike@math.mun.ca (David Pike)
To: PIKE-DNA-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: [PIKE-DNA] Some press coverage, and another close match


Hi everybody.

I've got a few items to share today, the first of which is that our
project has (finally) gotten a bit of press coverage, in The Compass,
a weekly paper based in Carbonear, Newfoundland.  The news story
is actually about some local folklore involving privateer Gilbert Pike
and Irish princess Sheila NaGeira, but it does at least mention our
DNA project.  If you're interested in the full story, it's online
(possibly only for the next week though) at:
http://www.cbncompass.ca/index.cfm?iid=1118&sid=7643

Something else that has happened in the past little while is that the
full 37-marker results for a new participant (Roger, 50318) came out.
Roger's results place him in the same group as the family of John Pike
who settled in Massachusetts in 1635.  But what is interesting is that
Roger has traced his ancestry back to England in the 1700s and 1800s.
So it looks like John probably had some Pike relatives that stayed
behind in England when he sailed to Massachusetts in 1635, meaning
also that "Group 1" in our list of results is probably going to be
for a big Pike family in which John's descendants form just one branch
on the family tree.

What's also interesting about Roger's results is that he shares a
distinctive mutation with some other Pike's in "Group 1" but who
don't have a documented connection with John Pike.  It's hard to
tell, but this might be a reflection that these other participants
(with kit numbers 24697 and 32721) might belong to yet another branch
of the Pike family tree for Group 1 (that is, possibly a branch other
than the one for Roger's line, and also other than for the family of
John Pike who settled in Massachusetts in 1635)... that is they might
be cousins of John rather than his descendants.

As usual, we need more test results from more participants in order
for us to get a better idea of what the true reality happens to be.
In this regard I am happy to at least be able to mention that we've
had two new members join lately, for whom the DNA samples are now
being processed.

- David.

PS - The details of all test results can be found on our project's website at:
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html