To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 09:12:20 -0230 (NDT)
From: dapike@math.mun.ca (David Pike)
Subject: [PIKE-DNA] August Bulletin #1


Hi everybody.

Once again there are about a half dozen new results that I want to mention,
so again I'm going to spread these out over a couple of email messages.

Let me start with the results for kit N51451, who is currently an anonymous
participant in our project.  Although his 12-marker results do not perfectly
match anybody else in our project, he does match both Peg/John (24697) and
James (62921) on 11 out of 12 markers.  On this basis, coupled with the fact
that N51451 seems to not have any non-Pike genetic matches, I've included him
as part of our project's "Group 1".

Meanwhile, it's beginning to look as though our project might have its very
first case of two strangers being put in touch with each other thanks to a
genetic match, and then actually discovering the details of how they're
related to each other!  What's also interesting is that this is in our
project's "Group 1".

To elaborate a bit, Richard (kit 93897) had previously traced his ancestry
back to John Pike who settled in Massachusetts in 1635.  So it's a good thing
that his DNA results confirmed that he belongs to this family.  However,
Richard's results revealed a mutation not shared by any of the other known
descendants of John.  Specifically, Richard has a 15 on marker #6 (DYS-385b)
whereas all of the other results that we currently have from known descendants
of John have a marker value of 14.

In the past I have stated that such mutations can prove to be powerful tools,
since anybody else who comes along without a paper trail connection to John
but who has a peculiar mutation is more likely to fit into the family tree
somewhere on the branch that shares the mutation than on other parts of the tree
that don't share it.  In this case, the timing is bit backwards, since Ed
(kit 61276) came along back in 2006.  He shares Richard's marker value of 15,
but was genealogically stuck at a Noah Pike born in the late 1700s.

Precisely because Richard and Ed share this mutation, they corresponded
with each other and compared what they knew of their family trees.  And it
looks like Richard and Ed have probably figured out how to connect Ed
(and his branch back to Noah) into the bigger family tree.  They are still
doing some double-checking, but if this holds up and they are confident that
the connection is for real, then I'll update the mini family tree shown for
"Group 1" at
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html
to attach Ed's lineage in its proper place in the larger family tree.
It is genealogical breakthroughs like this that our project was set up
to help make happen.

- David.