Previous Post: Before Goochland
In 2004 the Meek dna surname project was started. Its website is meekdna.com. Participants will have a last name of Meek or variants of it. The testing consists of ydna only. For those who do not know what ydna testing is, it compares the genetic make up of the y chromosome. Since it is only looking at the y chromosome, only males can take it. This benefits genealogy because it follows the surname.
The main thing that surprised me is just how many people named Meek(s) that are not related to each other. Right now the project has eleven different family groups with another 15 individuals that don't relate at all. I didn't know this surname was that common.
Our family, descendants of William Meeks belong to group F where several descendants of Athe, Priddy, Littleton and Nacy have submitted test. The results show that Athe and Priddy do not share the same father as Littleton and Nacy. But the test does show they are related. Their closest possible relation would be 1st cousins, but even that relationship would have a high mutation rate. As stated in previous posts, I personally believe they were first cousins. Littleton and Nacy being the sons of John Meeks, brother of William Meeks.
The major find for the project though, comes from a donor in Scotland, whose ancestry is a family that has owned Fortissat in Scotland since 1664. Fortissat is a property in the village of Shotts, Lanarkshire County, Scotland. This property was purchased by William Meike, who is from Burnhead. Burnhead is a property just south of the village of Longridge in West Lothian Scotland. Looking at ancestry.com, there are numerous Meek families throughout West Lothian during the 17nth century. Not all of them are related though. One other person who has ancestry in West Lothian has donated and he is among the 15 individuals that didn't match any group.
Another donor from from Indiana, whose immigrant ancestor was William Meek, born around 1795 and married in Edinburgh in 1827 (I believe this is the earliest record of him). This William immigrated to Ontario Canada in the 1830's. The donor is more closely related to the Fortissat family than we are, and has a good chance of being a descendant of William Meike who purchased Fortissat. A connection just hasn't been made yet.
That's two points for the Lothians in the Lowlands of Scotland. Looking at our deep heritage, we belong to the L193 haplogroup. Haplogroups are like the worlds family tree, with everybody belonging to the oldest haplogroup, then as mutations happen throughout the ages, younger haplogroups are created that parcel out portions of the population that belong to them. The L193 haplogroup is part of the older R1b group (R1b is generally associated with Western Europe). L193 has been estimated to be 1100-1800 years old, which is a really young haplogroup. What this means is the first person to carry the mutation that is unique to L193, lived 1100-1800 years ago, and everyone that belongs to L193 has a direct paternal lineage back to that person.
The heaviest concentration of people belonging to the L193 haplogroup are in the Lowlands of Scotland. This is why we need to question Dr. Priddy Meeks when he said the immigrant ancestor came from England. If he did come from England, he (or his ancestors) almost certainly came from Scotland before he (they) went to England. But there wasn't a lot of immigration between Scotland and England before the union in 1707.
This is a wealth of information that the early researchers of the family did not know. It allows us to narrow our search in the Lowlands of Scotland, or try to make connections between a Scottish family and an English family. Also, connections between the Fortissat family with any other family will do wonders to our research. While researchers have been studying our Meeks family in America for over 50 years, and a great deal of knowledge is known about them, knowledge about Meek(s) families in Scotland and England have not yet been so thoroughly researched. More than likely, all the records on the America said of the Atlantic have been researched, so researchers should focus their time and energy towards the Scotland and England and start making connections.
Next Post: Our Scottish Cousins
A load of errors in this history, there was no migration of Scots into England in the 15th & 16th century. A period when both countries were at war, here or in France. Charles II was crowned king of Scots on his fathers death not after the Restoration.
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