Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:19:39 -0330 (NST)
From: David Pike 
To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Subject: [PIKE-DNA] Pasquotank County, North Carolina



Hi everybody.

This email message is going to be a long one, even though it's based on
just a single new result, for Harry Pike (kit 132584).

Harry tested 37 markers, and his results came back from the lab on
November 6th.  As has happened to just over 25% of all Pikes in our
project, Harry's results put him into our project's large "Group 1" in
which he has a perfect 25-marker match with James (kit 62921).

This might have been just a short and not-very-exciting email message were
it not for the fact that Harry comes to us with a pedigree in hand,
tracing his Pike lineage back to Samuel Pike who settled in Pasquotank
County in or about the 1690s.  And, as I'll get to in a few minutes, we
can combine Harry's pedigree information with his DNA results to perform
an interesting analysis that would have been impossible just a few years
ago (i.e. before genealogical DNA testing became available).

We have been trying to find a known-descendant of Samuel for several years
now, so that we could establish the genetic profile of the Pasquotank
County Pike family.  So it's wonderful to now be able to announce that,
since Harry is a genetic match to our "Group 1" clan, the Pasquotank
County Pikes are indeed related to the family of John Pike who settled in
Massachusetts in 1635, as well as the Pike family that was prominent in
Cork, Ireland from the 1600s onwards.

It warrants mention that the Pikes of Cork were Quakers, as were the early
Pikes of Pasquotank County.  Accordingly, this has led some people to
suggest that the Samuel Pike who arrived at Pasquotank County actually
originated at Cork.  However, this assumption has been disputed by various
genealogists who have reasoned that Samuel was born in London, England to
John and Emma Pike.

The London scenario has the benefit of corroborating evidence.  Samuel did
not arrive alone in the colonies, but was instead accompanied by his
mother Emma (a widow who subsequently remarried to John Nixon and Edward
Mayo (who had provided Emma and her children passage from England to
Virginia)) and his sister named Africa (who married twice, to Hugh
McGregory and Robert Hicks).  The details of these family names, etc.,
lead us to the parish of St Mary Aldermary in London, where we find births
and/or baptisms as follows:

- 1671:  Emma ....... d/o John & Emma Pike
- 1672:  Robert ..... s/o John & Eme Pike
- 1673:  Africa ..... d/o John & Emma Pike
- 1674:  John ....... s/o John & Emma Pike
- 1676:  Edward ..... s/o John & Emma Pike
- 1677:  Elizabeth .. d/o John & Emma Pike
- 1678:  Samuell .... s/o John & Emma Picke
- 1680:  Mary ....... d/o John & Em Pike

We can also find an earlier baptism in the nearby parish of St Giles 
Cripplegate:

- 1668:  Catherine .. d/o John & Eme Pike

For those who are curious, these can be found online by going to this
website:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm
which allows you to conduct searches within individual batches of the IGI
(which typically correspond to individual parishes).

Although I have seen references to Emma's maiden surname being Blount, I'm
not aware that a marriage record has been located for John and Emma.  The
Great Fire of London that took place from the 2nd to the 5th of September
1666 might have destroyed their marriage record, or perhaps their marriage
record just hasn't yet been found by anybody who would notice it for its
importance to us.

Although the IGI utility that I just mentioned has no burial data, the
records from St Mary Aldermary were apparently transcribed and published
in 1860 by the Harloian Society.  Their records show that nearly all of
the children of John and Emma died young:

- Catherine in 1679
- Emma in 1672
- Robert in 1673
- John in 1676
- Edward in 1676
- Elizabeth in 1677
- Mary in 1680

John himself is noted as having died on 01 October 1681, at which time all
that was left of the family was widow Emma and two children Africa and
Samuel, which precisely corresponds to the Pike family that settled at
Pasquotank County.

It would be great if somebody could eventually check the original records
(which are now likely on microfilm somewhere), both to confirm the
accuracy of the transcripts that I've cited above, but also to see if
there might be additional clues that will lead us towards earlier
generations of this family.

I will mention one lead that has already been tried:  the Prerogative
Court of Canterbury has a will for a John Pyke, weaver, of Stepney (which
is not far to the east of the parishes of St Mary Aldermary and St Giles
Cripplegate) that was proved on 20 October 1681... unfortunately for us,
this appears to be just a coincidence, as the will of John Pyke of Stepney
seems to describe a different family.

Regarding the dispute as to whether Samuel was from Cork or from London,
in addition to the historical records, we are now able to consider the
question from a genetic perspective.  Bear with me now, as this is going
to get a bit technical.  Let me start though by reminding everybody that
our "Group 1" clan represents an old and very extended Pike family.  For
instance, we have two separate lineages within "Group 1" that both go back
into the late 1500s and still do not connect to each other, meaning that
they must connect with a common Pike forefather at some even earlier point
in time.

Despite the genetic similarity that all members of "Group 1" share with
one another, there are some nuances among the marker values.  The most
noteworthy marker in this regard is the second marker (which is
technically known as marker DYS-390).  For this marker most of the Pikes
in our "Group 1" have a value of 25, but there is a sizeable subgroup of
people with a value of 24.

Harry, whose DNA results prompted this email message, has a 24 on his
second marker. This value of 24 is also present in several other Pikes who
can trace their ancestry back to North Carolina, but then get stuck in
their genealogy.  This value of 24 is also present in Roger (kit 50318)
who has been able to trace his ancestry back to a Thomas Pike who was born
in Hampshire in 1752.

Although it is possible that Roger descends from Harry's ancestor Samuel
who settled in Pasquotank County (that is, if one of Samuel's descendants
returned to England and gave rise to Roger's lineage), it seems more
likely that Harry's Samuel and Roger's Thomas were cousins who share some
earlier Pike forefather, who we have yet to identify, but who passed a
value of 24 to each of his sons, who passed the 24 on to their sons, etc.,
eventually passing the 24 to each of Harry and Roger.  This would mean
that Harry's value of 24 would have been present in his lineage all the
way back to Samuel's birth in 1678, as well as even earlier to the common
ancestor of Harry and Roger.

Elsewhere within our "Group 1", every descendant of John Pike who settled
in Massachusetts in 1635 that has joined our project has been found to
carry a 25 on the second marker, and so we are confident that John himself
(who was born in 1572) also had a 25 for this marker.

So far only one known member of the Pike family from Cork has joined our
project.  This is Jerry (kit 74703), who carries a 25 on his second
marker.  I'll also note here that Jerry's lineage can be traced back to
1598 with the birth of his ancestor Richard Pike in Berkshire (it was
Richard's son Richard who took up residence at Cork in the 1600s).

Similar to Harry and Roger, since Jerry and the descendants of John (who
settled in Massachusetts in 1635) carry a marker value of 25, then it is
most probable that the 25 has been present in both lines (in Cork and in
Massachusetts) all the way back to their common forefather.  With Jerry's
Richard being born in 1598 and John in 1572, this means that the Pikes of
Cork would have carried a 25 right from their arrival in Cork.  Given that
the Pikes of Pasquotank County carry a 24, we now have an extra piece of
evidence that argues against the theory of the Pasquotank County Pikes
being originally from Cork.

Part of the challenge in this is that only one value (either 24 or 25) is
the true original value for our "Group 1".  The other value had to arise
as a mutation at some point in history when a male Pike was born, and it
is his descendants who carry the mutated value.  We don't yet know which
value was the original and which was the mutation, but both appear to have
been around for quite some time:  the 25 since prior to the birth of John
Pike in 1572, and the 24 since prior to the birth of Samuel's father John
(likely about the 1640s).  As more Pikes from "Group 1" join our project,
especially those with lengthy pedigrees in hand, we should gain some more
insight into which value is the mutation and when it arose.

To get back to where we started, with Harry's results, given the presence
of his ancestors John and Emma in London, I've updated our map at
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html#Map
to include green pushpins (with a number 1 on them for our "Group 1") for
each of St Mary Aldermary and St Giles Cripplegate (you have to zoom in
though to see them appear separately on the map).

- David.