To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 09:27:35 -0230 (NDT)
From: dapike@math.mun.ca (David Pike)
Subject: [PIKE-DNA] New Results (and new matches)


Hi everybody.

The past week or two have been very exciting.  On Monday of
last week, and again on Thursday, new test results came out.
And both of them ended up matching with people who previously
did not have any matches with other Pikes.

Last Monday, John (kit 61290) had his 25-marker results returned
from the lab.  The outcome was that he matched on 24 markers
with Roger (33184), whose results had come out back in April
of 2005.  Both John and Roger have traced their Pike ancestry
back to St. Mary's County in Maryland, where Pikes have lived
since March of 1633/34.  Looking at John's and Roger's paternal
pedigrees, their most recent common forefather was William James
Pike who was born in the early 1760s in St. Mary's County but
later moved to Kentucky where he married Susannah Mills in 1791.
Roger descends from William & Susannah's son Joseph (born in 1796)
while John descends from their son Bernard (born in 1801).

On Thursday, the first 25 markers for participant 69482 were
released, revealing a perfect 25-marker match with Maureen's
father Gilbert (kit 62731).  Maureen and Gilbert have traced
their Pike lineage back to James Pike who arrived in Massachusetts
in the 1640s and resided at Charlestown and Reading.  So it
now appears that participant 69482 also descends from James...
just how is not yet known, but thanks to the DNA results
attention can be focused on finding a connection with James'
family tree.

A week earlier, on Sept 7, the last of the 37 markers for
Fred (kit N31746) came back from the lab.  Folks might recall
that he and Bryan (28606) matched on 11 of their first 12
markers, and on 23 of their first 25 markers.  At first glance,
these 12- and 25-marker results looked like there might be a
relationship between them, except that both of them had
several close 25-marker matches in the FTDNA database with
other folks (not just Pikes) which essentially meant that
their 25-marker genetic signatures were somewhat common.
Now that we can compare both of their 37-marker signatures
we find that there are 11 differences between their markers,
which indicates that Bryan and Fred's Pike family lines are
different from each other.

Bryan and Fred's DNA results also serve as a great example
of how important it is to test enough markers to hone in on
a genetic signature that is specific to just one's own family
line.  In their case, 25 markers was not enough and so it took
37 markers.  The related question here is just how does one
know how many markers are enough?  To get some sense of this,
when you login to your personal webpage at FamilyTreeDNA,
take a look at the "Recent Ancestral Origins" page.  It lists
the number of close matches that we each have and where those
people said their paternal lines originated (this information
comes from the little form that got sent back to FTDNA with
our DNA samples).  By looking at how many (or few) close
matches are listed, you can get some sense of how common
(or rare) your DNA is.  For example, both Bryan and Fred
have a few hundred close matches when considering 12 markers,
as well as several dozen close matches at the 25-marker level,
but neither has any close 37-marker matches listed.
Meanwhile, I (David, 23996) have about 1000 close 12-marker
matches, but at 25 markers only 6 are listed (and 2 of these
are with other Pikes).  At 37 markers, I have no close
matches in the FTDNA database.

- David.

PS: Some people might have noticed that I was having email
problems over the weekend.  The situation seems to have
been fixed now. So if you sent me an email that bounced
back, you should be able to re-send it now.