Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 10:09:15 -0230 (NDT)
From: David Pike 
To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Subject: Another Puzzle, this time in Bristol England


Hi everybody.

In my last message I highlighted a case of genealogical mis-identification 
that was brought to our attention with the thanks of DNA testing.  As it 
happens, this has also occurred with another pair of people in our 
project:  Robert (kit 194314) and Alun (134124).

Robert's results were reported by the lab in March and were mentioned in 
the notice that I sent to our mailing list in early April.  To briefly 
reiterate, Robert tested 37 markers but does not yet have any matches to 
speak of.  At the time, we were able to trace Robert's lineage back to the 
mid 1700s in the City of Bristol in Gloucestershire, England.

Alun's results have been available to us for two years now.  He tested 67 
markers and belongs to our project's "Group 17" which consists of Pikes 
from the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland, another line that has been in 
London since the mid 1700s, plus Alun's line that we traced back to 
Bristol and then to the village of Tetbury before that.

It was thanks to Eric Hillier (who has Pike ancestors from Newfoundland's 
Burin Peninsula) and his initiative to take a closer look at the Pikes of 
Bristol that we were able to spot what now looks to have been an error in 
tracing Alun's lineage.  The passage of time and the corresponding 
accumulation of more information also played a role.

We previously knew that Alun descended from Thomas Pike and Mary Gale who 
married at Bristol in 1840.  And we knew that Thomas' father was named 
Thomas.  After some research we concluded that Thomas (the father-in-law 
of Mary Gale) had married in 1815 to Elizabeth Soars/Scourse and died in 
1819; he seemed to be the correct choice since the dates fit and he and 
Elizabeth had a son named Thomas Horatio in 1819.

However, since then we have obtained the details of the 1840 marriage of 
Thomas Pike and Mary Gale, and have learned that Thomas Pike (the father 
of the groom) was a plumber.  Also, the 1851 census lists a Thomas Pike 
(age 61, married, born at Bristol, and a plumber's labourer) as a patient 
at St Peter's Hospital in Bristol.  These snippets of information raise 
some doubt about our earlier conclusion, especially the part about father 
Thomas having died in 1819.

These doubts became magnified when Robert's lineage was investigated. 
Initially we had only traced his ancestry back to the family of James Pike 
and Jane Webb who married at Bristol in 1812.  James was a painter, as was 
his son Thomas and also his grandson Thomas.  With more recent research, 
we are confident that James' parents were Thomas Pike and Catherine 
Serles/Searles who baptised a son James in 1792.  Thomas' death 
certificate in 1845 states that Thomas was a painter, as does the 1857 
death certificate of his widow Catherine.

Thomas (the painter who died in 1845) was a burgess of Bristol, which 
helps to assure us that his father was a burgess named James Pike, who 
himself was a tiler and plasterer.  This is where we find that we have a 
serious contradiction though, since the lineage that we had previously 
pieced together for Alun also included this particular James.  However, 
the DNA results for Alun and for Robert are far from being a match with 
each other, meaning that they cannot both have James as a common paternal 
ancestor.

Since the evidence now favours Robert's connection to James (the burgess), 
Alun's pedigree at 
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=Pedigrees/134124.html 
has now been revised and only goes back as far as the plumber Thomas Pike 
(whose son Thomas married Mary Gale).

Likewise, Robert's lineage at 
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=Pedigrees/194314.html 
has been updated to include James Pike (the burgess) as well as several 
generations of his ancestry, going back to the village of Tetbury in 
Gloucestershire.

One thing that would be very helpful in confirming that these revisions 
are indeed correct would be to test the DNA of some other Pike with a 
solid connection to Tetbury.  Some candidate families have been traced as 
far forward as the 1901 UK census.  I'm hoping to have the opportunity to 
search for them in the 1911 census in a few weeks, and thereafter we can 
try to bridge the gap to the present.


In the meantime, I want to provide an interim update on the fund-raising 
challenge that was mentioned in my last message.  Since then, $140 in 
donations have been made to our project's Sponsorship Fund.  All donations 
made by the deadline of Father's Day, 19 June 2011, will be matched dollar 
for dollar (up to a total of $250) by an anonymous benefactor.  The link 
for online donations is
http://www.familytreedna.com/group-general-fund-contribution.aspx

Thanks,

- David.