Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:03:24 -0330 (NST)
From: David Pike 
To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Subject: Group 17:  Bristol, Glyncorrwg, St Lawrence, and Bay L'Argent



Hi everybody.

This email bulletin is entirely about our project's "Group 17", which has 
seen some very interesting activity in the past little while.  As a quick 
reminder, until recently "Group 17" involved two Pikes (Levi and Peter) 
from St Lawrence, Newfoundland as well as Alun Pike in Australia (but 
whose Pike line could be traced back to Glyncorrwg, Wales).  The markers 
for the people in "Group 17" are all shown here: 
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html#Group17

In terms of new DNA results, we have had three new members match with the 
others in our "Group 17", now bringing the group's membership up to six.

The first newcomer that I'll mention is Roland (kit 165957) who tested 37 
markers.  Roland and Levi already knew that they were first cousins, so it 
is no surprise that their DNA results are a very close match.  Levi has 
tested 25 markers, 24 of which are the same as Roland.  The difference is 
on marker #15, where Levi has a 9, whereas everybody else in "Group 17" 
has a 10.  Essentially this means that a mutation (from 10 to 9) took 
place in either Levi or his father.

Looking at the results for "Group 17", it is interesting to see that 
Roland and Levi share a value of 28 on marker #21, but everybody else in 
the group has a value of 29.  Again, this is the result of mutation, but 
in this case the mutation would have taken place in either the grandfather 
or great grandfather of Levi and Roland, but not their great great 
grandfather John.  We can deduce that this is so because the mutation was 
passed on to both Levi and Roland, and also because nobody else in the 
group has it.

Next I'll discuss Roger (kit 167779), who tested all 67 markers.  So far, 
the only other member of the group to test 67 markers is Alun.  Alun and 
Roger match each other on 66 out of their 67 markers, so clearly they 
belong together in our "Group 17".  As for the other people in the group, 
Roger is a perfect 25-marker match with two of them, and so we have our 
project's 31st perfect 25-marker match.

The genealogical story for Roger is a little bit interesting.  A friend of 
our project, Eric Hillier (who also descends from the Pike family of St 
Lawrence, Newfoundland) provided me with a few details of a Charles 
Louis/Lewis Pike from St Lawrence who left Newfoundland but was then 
difficult to trace.  Part of the challenge was that Charles was sometimes 
recorded with his first name, but other times Louis (his middle name) is 
what was recorded.  To add to the confusion, he remarried after his first 
wife died, and is known to have returned to Newfoundland for a while too, 
making it less than certain whether some Charles Pikes or Louis Pikes 
mentioned in census records, etc., were this fellow or other men with 
similar names.  Anyway, with help from Eric, we managed to find an 
obituary from near Boston for a Pike that we suspected might be a son of 
Charles Louis, and that in turn led us to another family member, and 
ultimately we were able to make contact with Roger in Texas.

Roger was able to confirm that his grandfather Charles Louis Pike came 
from Newfoundland, and now that we have DNA results to further support the 
connection to "Group 17", we are confident that Roger's ancestry can be 
traced back to John & Catherine Pike who lived at St Lawrence as early as 
the 1820s.  A mini family tree showing Roger's place among John & 
Catherine's descendants is now found on our website, just above where the 
markers are displayed for "Group 17".

The third new result to mention is for Tom (kit 61284) who tested 37 
markers.  Tom's Pike ancestry goes back to a John Pike, born in the 1840s, 
who ended up living at Bay L'Argent in Fortune Bay, Newfoundland.  By land 
this is about 60 km north of St Lawrence, although by sea it's around the 
bottom of the Burin Peninsula and then up at the top of the other side of 
the Burin Peninsula.  Genealogically, Tom is stuck and cannot yet get past 
this ancestor John.  Given that Newfoundland is also home to our project's 
"Group 2", we turned to DNA testing to gain some insight.

As it turned out, Tom matched with the Pikes of "Group 17" from nearby St 
Lawrence.  Indeed, Tom and Peter (kit 161522) ended up being a perfect 
37-marker match (which is now just the 7th time that our project has had a 
perfect 37-marker match).  So there is no doubt now that Tom's Pikes at 
Bay L'Argent are somehow related to the Pikes at St Lawrence.  But we know 
of no John Pikes born in St Lawrence in the 1840s who aren't already 
accounted for, and who could have settled at Bay L'Argent.  So it is 
beginning to look as though "Group 17" might be more widespread than it 
first appeared to be.  More DNA testing will be needed for confirmation, 
but there is now a stronger suspicion that the Pikes of St Lawrence and 
Bay L'Argent (who are mainly Anglican in faith) might be kin to Pikes from 
the town of Burin (who were mainly Catholic, although there are also a few 
Methodist Pike families there in the early records too)... there was a 
John Pike baptised at Burin in 1847 that *might* have settled at Bay 
L'Argent and become Tom's ancestor.

It warrants mention here that where the first Pikes to settle on the Burin 
Peninsula came from is not today known. John & Catherine at St Lawrence 
were there in the 1820s had long been thought to have come from Carbonear, 
but the genetic mismatch with the Carbonear Pikes who form our "Group 2" 
has pretty much ruled out that possibility.  But if it ends up being that 
John was just one of several Pikes from the same time frame and from 
different parts of Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula, and who we can 
potentially (with some more DNA testing) show to belong together in "Group 
17", then that would indicate that John probably was a local boy rather 
than a new immigrant.  This would also shift the search for records that 
will bridge the gap back to England (or where-ever the family originated 
prior to settling in Newfoundland) to an even earlier time period (during 
which record keeping was far from good).

But there is hope, thanks to DNA testing.  Recall that Alun, who lives in 
Australia and traces his ancestry back to Wales, also belongs to "Group 
17".  Several of the St Lawrence members of our "Group 17", including Eric 
Hillier who I mentioned earlier, have been working hard, trying to 
discover more about their cousin Alun's ancestry.  The last time that it 
was discussed, Alun's lineage was genealogically stuck at his great great 
grandfather Edward Pike, born in the 1840s in Bristol.  Despite the 
generally good record keeping in England during Edward's lifetime, Edward 
has been exceptionally elusive for us.  We cannot find his marriage 
record, we cannot find his death record, and although he should have been 
alive during each of the 1851, 1861, and 1871 censuses we could only find 
him in 1871.

A very recent breakthrough, thanks to the efforts of Eric Hillier, has 
resulted in Edward (or at least we believe it's him) being found in the 
1851 census.  It now appears that Edward's father had passed away in the 
1840s, and that Edward's mother had remarried to a fellow named Ferdinand 
PHILLIPS, given that the 1851 census lists a Ferdinand PHILLIPS with wife 
Mary and two children named Edward PIKE (age 7) and Thomas PIKE (age 4). 
One of the biggest hurdles in discovering this was that Ferdinand, Mary 
and Edward are listed at the bottom of one page of the census, whereas 
Thomas is atop the next page.  And, to maker things even worse, the page 
with Edward seems to have been skipped when building some of the online 
census indices!  So only son Thomas was left to be "easily" found, except 
that he got indexed as belonging to a NASH or NECK family because it was a 
NASH/NECK family that was at the bottom of the page prior to the page that 
got skipped.

But now armed with evidence of Edward's existence in 1851, along with 
information to suggest that his mother became widowed and remarried, it 
appears that Edward was baptised in October 1844 to parents Thomas PIKE 
and Mary GALE who married in 1840 (and whose fathers were listed in their 
marriage record as both being named Thomas).  In turn, it now appears 
likely that Edward's father Thomas was the Thomas Horatio Pike that was 
baptised in Bristol in 1819 to parents Thomas & Elizabeth, who are likely 
to be the couple Thomas PIKE and Elizabeth SOARS who married in 1815.

There may yet be more progress to come regarding Alun's ancestry, but this 
latest breakthrough is something that is very exciting.

- David.