Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:09:41 -0230 (NDT)
From: David Pike
To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Subject: Pike DNA Project Update
Hi everybody.
I want to first mention that Family Tree DNA is currently having a sale
that applies to their Y-DNA tests, not just for new kits but also for
upgrades. Moreover, the sale applies not just to 37, 67 and 111
STR-marker Y-DNA tests but also the BigY test that looks at over ten
million SNP type markers.
Next let me mention that in May I went to England and spent three days at
the National Archives at Kew. While there I photographed several
documents pertaining to various Pike families, most especially those from
Bristol, Poole, Portsmouth, Combe St Nicholas and Newport in England, as
well as Woodinstown in Tipperary Ireland. It's going to take me a while
to transcribe the documents from the photographs, but one thing that I've
already been able to discover from them is that descendants of William
Pikes and Walters Pikes who were mayors of Bristol in the 1500s were still
alive as of the 1690s, as evidenced by a Chancery Court case involving one
William Pike (who, for those familiar with the history of Newfoundland,
was a grandson of John Guy who founded the colony at Cupids in 1610).
Unfortunately the court case did not say where this William was then
living, although I suspect he may have been somewhere near the parish of
Michaelchurch Escley in Herefordshire.
Another of the documents that I looked at happened to be signed by a
William Pike who was mayor of Poole in 1693. You can see his signature
alongside the seal of the Town and County of Poole in the banner that is
now shown atop our project's online forum at
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/pike/activity-feed
There are hundreds of more Chancery Court documents at the archives that
involve Pikes, but for many of them the online index does not offer many
details beyond descriptions such as "Pike vs Pike". For my recent trip I
tried to focus on documents that had enough details in the catalogue to
ensure they had a high chance of being relevant to particular Pike
families of interest. There may yet be discoveries to be made in the
remaining documents, but they'll have to wait for later trips. One
curious thing about the Chancery Court records that I saw is that they
only contain accusations and rebuttals from plaintiffs and defendants.
They don't say what the outcomes of the court cases were. Presumably
there ought to be records of decrees or judgements that were handed down,
to say whether the court sided with the plaintiffs or the defendants ...
if anybody knows where to find such records, please let me know at
dapike@mun.ca
Okay, now to DNA stuff. My previous email update back in March
concentrated on BigY test results. Since then we've had a few more BigY
results reported, but with one exception I'm going to postpone discussing
them for another time (which will also give people a chance to order BigY
tests and have their results included in my next major analysis of them).
The one exception that I noted is for kit 49964, which is for an anonymous
project member who had previously tested 37 STR markers back in 2006.
Based on those markers he did not appear to fit into any of our numbered
groups, so he was placed among our collection of "Ungrouped" results.
However, with his BigY test results (which included an upgrade to 111 STR
markers) it was discovered that he really does fit into one of groups
after all, namely "Group 10" which is largely made up of people who carry
the McPIKE and McPEAK surname variants. If you look at the list of
results for this group at
https://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html
you will see that kit 49964 has several distinctive mutations. Indeed,
there are enough that Family Tree DNA does not report any other group
members as potential matches at 37 or fewer markers. But now that more
STR markers are available, FTDNA does report that there is a 60/67 marker
match with Taed (kit B4027). It still is not a close match, but it is now
within the threshold to be reported. Moreover, within Group 10 we now
have three BigY test results, for 49964, for Taed (kit B4027), and also
for a nephew of Sandy (kit 18526). When looking at the separate list of
BigY Matches reported by FTDNA for kit 49964, only two are listed as
sharing the same terminal SNP ... these are Sandy's nephew and Taed.
Turning now to new STR results within our project, one of them did not
match with any current project members and so has been added to the
collection of "Ungrouped" results at
https://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html#Ungrouped
This one is for Fred (810125) who tested 37 markers and who remains
genealogically stuck in the USA, tracing his lineage back to his great
grandfather John O Pike who was born in Pennsylvania about 1854. Possibly
this might be the same person as the John O Pike who is in the 1860 census
at Chester Pennsylvania with parents Edward & Selina as well as sisters
named Mississippi and Jane. If so, then it may be that this Pike line
traces back to a Joshua Pike who was born in New Hampshire around 1742,
but as yet this connection has not been firmly established.
Meanwhile, some new DNA matches have enabled us to identify two additional
genetic "groups" for our project. The first of these has been numbered as
"Group 22" and consists of two brothers, Brian (825262) and Donald
(836898) who match each other on 36 out of 37 markers. The lack of
matches with other project members is what led to the creation of a new
numbered group for them. When the DNA samples were first sent in for
processing, we had actually anticipated a different outcome, because Brian
and Donald had previously traced their Pike ancestry back to John Pike who
settled in Massachusetts in 1635. A large number of John's descendants
have previously tested their DNA and they form a large proportion of the
members of our project's "Group 1". So when Brian and Donald were found
to not share the genetic profile of Group 1, we were a little surprised.
Evidently something is not as it was thought to be. Perhaps there's been
an error in tracing their genealogy, or perhaps there's been an
undocumented adoption or some other form of misattributed paternity in
their line's history. Right now we don't know, so the task at hand is to
try to narrow down where in history their line departs from the genealogy
that they had developed for it. This will involve a combination of
testing various cousins as well as putting close scrutiny on the records
for each generation.
The other new group that we've been able to establish is "Group 23".
Thomas and Liz (kit IN16877) received Thomas' 67-marker results in April
and discovered that they matched on 64 markers with an anonymous member of
our project (with kit number 395984) who had until then been in our
collection of "Ungrouped" members. With the match now found, a new group
was created.
One last new result that I'll mention in this update is for Michael (kit
830594) who tested 67 markers and ended up matching on 66 of them with
members of our "Group 8" which so far is mostly comprised of Pikes who
trace their ancestry back to the US states of Alabama, Kentucky, and South
Carolina, although there is one group member whose line traces back to a
Pike ancestor born in Massachusetts about 1747. Michael in particular
traces back to a William Pike who is believed to have left England on the
ship "Ruby" in 1754 to South Carolina, making his way to Edgefield County.
That's about all that I'll write about for now, except that I also want to
quickly mention that we made use of Google Ads (formerly AdWords) earlier
this year to try to do some advertising and raise awareness of our
project. Because I've written a report about this for the Guild of
One-Name Studies in the UK, I'm hestitant to broadcast it before they
publish it, but if you're interested then feel free to email me if you
want to see a private copy of it in advance.
Thanks,
- David (dapike@mun.ca)
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