African American Descendants of Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia

Many of the descendants of Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia, have carefully documented their line back to Joseph. One group of descendants may not find it so easy to document their descent from Joseph or even be aware that they are descendants of Joseph. This group is the African American descendants of Joseph.

Appendix I “Enslaved Africans [and] Free Persons of Color Surnamed Vick” in “Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia and His Descendants” by John D. Beatty and Di Ann Vick lists some of the slaves owned by Joseph’s descendants. What cannot be gleaned from the appendix is if any of these slaves are also Joseph’s descendants or are the mothers of descendants of Joseph.

Two African American men who have been Y-DNA tested have Y-DNA signatures that match Joseph’s Y-DNA signature. One of these men matches the proven descendants of Richard3, Richard2, Joseph1. The other man has not tested enough of his Y-DNA to place him in one of Joseph1’s son’s lines. Because the second man’s Y-DNA signature does not have a change shared by all of the tested descendants of Joseph’s son Richard, it is more likely that he is a descendant of one of Joseph’s other four sons.

While Y-DNA can help in identifying whether an African American man is a descendant of Joseph, finding records to prove descent may be impossible. Harder still will be identifying African American female descendants of Joseph and African American men who are descendants of Joseph but who are not patrilineal descendants of Joseph. Since Y-DNA is only passed from father to son, females and men who are not patrilineal descendants of Joseph will not have the advantage of being able to use Y-DNA to discover their Vick ancestry.

Piecing Together the Deepest Patrilineal Roots of Those with the Vick Surname

In my November 18, 2008, blog I discussed the deep roots of the clan of Vicks who are descendants of Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia. In the blog I said

'Looking at even deeper roots we have found that Joseph1’s Y-DNA signature matches those found in a couple of men with ancestry from Norway. These men lived in Shetland and Orkney off of mainland Scotland. Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University examined James Larry Vick’s Y-DNA signature and compared it to the small number of research samples that had the same Y-DNA signature. In an e-mail on February 18, 2007, Professor Oppenheimer said, 'While, with these very small numbers, it is impossible to date the movement to from Norway to Shetland/Orkney, the information is nonetheless very specific and places your male ancestor most likely as an invader from northern Norway and ultimately from Asia.'”

Professor Oppenheimer also looked at the Y-DNA signature of a descendant of Elihu (christened in 1759 in Standish, Gloucestershire, England). Professor Oppenheimer said the Elihu clan’s patrilineal ancestor “arrived in the British Isles from the Basque Ice Age refuge between 15,000-13,000 years ago with the first hunter-gatherers.” He also said that Elihu’s Y-DNA matched that found in men whose patrilineal ancestors expanded from North Wales and Ireland some 5,000 years ago.

The Joseph1 clan and the Elihu clan are just two of the nine major Vick clans we have identified so far. Each of the clans traveled a different route (and none shared a common patrilineal ancestor in the time surnames have been used) but they all ended up with the Vick surname.

Place Name Index for Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia and His Descendants

Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia and His Descendants by John D. Beatty and Di Ann Vick is an indispensable reference I use for tracing Joseph's descendants. One thing I wish the book had, though, is a place name index. When Americans contact me with a question about their Vick line they usually include at least one reference to a location where their Vick ancestors lived. If their Vick ancestors lived in the southern U.S. the chances are excellent that they were descendants of Joseph.

Not being able to find easily the pages in the book where a location is mentioned slows down my search for how the person fits in the Vick family tree. To solve this problem, I have started putting together an index of place names in the book. The index should be ready in time for the July 2009 Vick Family Newsletter. If there is enough space in the newsletter I will include it in that issue. If there is not enough space in the July issue (because of the news from the reunion) I will put it in the October 2009 issue. So if you would like a copy of the index, it will be available soon.

Now, if I could just find some good reference books for the other Vick families.

Learning to Preserve and Share Vick Family History

On April 27, 2009, I will begin a five week course titled "Introduction to One-Name Studies." The course is offered by the Guild of One-Name Studies. The Guild says the "five week course will cover the history and study of surnames, what a one-name study consists of, how to get started, how to collect and analyse data from the core records and about the practical aspects of running a One-Name Study such as how to publicise your study, data protection, publishing findings and conclusions, and making sure your study is preserved for others in the future." I cannot wait to see how much I learn from the course and to put this new knowledge to work. I have been a member of the Guild for a couple of years, but I have a lot to learn (especially about British records).

I am also taking an online course in Microsoft Access (a relational database program). Access should give me another tool I need to help organize the mountain of data I am collecting. While I use a family tree program (Personal Ancestral File or PAF), I am missing a way to tie the data together on people that I cannot seem to place in a tree (or to spot that the data is on someone already in one of my trees).

By integrating the Guild course with Access I hope to do a much better job of helping to preserve and share our Vick family history.

Vick Family History Books

Are there any good Vick family history books or short histories about the Vick families other than those I have listed below? While I am interested in books about the Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia clan I am especially interested in books or short histories of other clans both in the U.S. and in other countries. The list below was largely gleaned from the book by Beatty and Vick.

· Robert Arthur, Vick of Vicksburg [New Orleans, LA: Typescript]
· John D. Beatty and Di Ann Vick, Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia and His Descendants [Los Angeles, CA: Genus Publishing, 2004]
· Dorothy Phelps Cole, Nitta Yuma king cotton [Nitta Yuma, MS: The Author, 1974]
· O. Vick Hines, Vick Families Descendants of Joseph, VA, 1675 [Sulphur Springs, TX: Unpublished]
· Ruth Vick O’Brien, A Genealogy of the Families and Descendants of William P. Vick I: 1791-1840; Agnes Bottoms Vick, 1833-1907; William P. Vick II: 1837-1902; Jesse Parker and Lucy Joyner Vick Parker: Married 1845 – 1792-1970 [Washington, D.C.: The Author, 1970]
· James Morris Perrin, Reverend Newitt Vick, Founder of Vicksburg, Mississippi, His Ancestry, Relatives and Descendants [Hammond, LA: The Author, 1990]
· James A. Vick, Robert, Son of the Virginia Immigrant Joseph Vick: An Account of Some of His Descendants [Waco, TX: The Author, 1990]
· John Leonides Vick, A Short History of the Vick Family [Typescript, 1967]
· Samuel B. Vick, Sr., Samuel B. Vick, Jr., and Lorrayne Vick Donnell, The Great Family of Joseph Vick Before 1675 to 1987 [Jackson, MS: Privately Published, 1987]
· Melba Wood, My Maternal Ancestry II [Chesterfield, IL: The Author, 1987]

Vick Family Newsletters

Earlier I wondered how many Vick Family reunions there will be this year. I received one reply, from Katie. She told me about a reunion I was not familiar with. She said the descendants of Joseph S. Vick will hold their biannual reunion in Shamrock, TX the third weekend in June.

In some cases families use newsletters to record and report what happened at a family reunion. Newsletter can be very helpful to those who could not attend a reunion and also to future generations who want to know their family’s history. That leads me to wonder how many newsletters there are (or have been) about Vick families. As the editor of the Vick Family Newsletter published by the Joseph Vick Family of America, I am very familiar with that one newsletter. Past issues contain many articles about JVFOA reunions.

It would be nice to learn about other Vick family newsletters, especially ones about Vick families in other countries. Even if a newsletter is no longer published, it would be valuable to know when another family did publish a newsletter and where copies of the newsletter can be found. Perhaps we can use these different newsletters to aid in discovering how all of our Vick families are related. It would be unfortunate for any newsletters to be lost.

In 1985 James M. Perrin edited and published the first newsletter for the Joseph Vick Family of America. In that first newsletter he wrote about a reunion being planned for the 8th and 9th of June 1985 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA. He also referenced a past reunion held in 1975. Surely there must have been at least one Vick family that had a newsletter before 1985 and surely there is at least one other Vick family somewhere in the world that publishes a newsletter today.

One thing that is common between the first issue of the Vick Family Newsletter and the most recent issue is that paying the cost of printing and distributing a newsletter is a challenge. James M. Perrin said on page one of the first Vick Family Newsletter “I am advancing the money necessary to publish and distribute this Newsletter pending receipt of additional dues.” Since blogs can reach a worldwide audience with no printing and distribution costs perhaps they will replace printed newsletters. Fortunately, we also have vehicles like Facebook and MyFamily to advertise reunions. These same vehicles also allow us to share and preserve photographs and descriptions of what happened at the reunions. Maybe these new ways of communicating will also help us preserve our Vick family history wherever we are in the world.

Y-DNA Can Help When a Misattributed Paternity Is Suspected in Our Patrilineal Pedigree

In my last blog entry I illustrated how Y-DNA was useful in evaluating whether census information was reliable. In the case of William Alfred Vick (Alfred6, Samuel5, ?Josiah4, Benjamin3, Robert2, Joseph1) census information seemed to rule out that he was the son of Alfred6. However, Y-DNA testing of a descendant of Alfred6 found that the descendant’s Y-DNA signature was consistent with William Alfred7 being the son of Alfred6. While Y-DNA cannot prove that one man is the son of another man it can show two men do share a recent common patrilineal ancestor. This information can be very valuable when combined with other genealogical information in our analysis of pedigrees.

On the other hand, Y-DNA can prove that one man is not the son of another man if the two men do not share what genetics call a haplogroup. Haplogroups are defined by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNs) – changes to a single letter in our DNA code. This ability to prove that two men do not share a recent common patrilineal ancestor makes Y-DNA very useful for evaluating stories that an ancestor’s paternity was misattributed. One such case where Y-DNA was helpful was for the descendants of Abner Vick, b. about 1816-1820. In “Some Descendants of Abner6 Vick” (Vick Family Newsletter, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, pages 17-19), Abner Milton and Joseph Thomas were listed as sons of Abner. Y-DNA testing proved that Abner Milton and Joseph Thomas were not patrilineal descendants of Joseph1.

The determination that Abner Milton and Joseph Thomas were not patrilineal descendants of Joseph1 was made based upon the Y-DNA test results of a descendant of Abner Milton and those of a descendant of Joseph Thomas. The two results matched each other, but they did not match the results of proven Joseph1 descendants. The fact that the results from the descendant of Abner Milton matched the results from the descendant of Joseph Thomas means that Abner Milton and Joseph Thomas do share a recent common patrilineal ancestor. That ancestor appears to have been the elder Abner, their father. In this case it does not appear that any other man was their father.

The elder Abner married Martha Susan Pack on 15 December 1837.1 Abner Milton was born on 27 May 1841, and Joseph Thomas was born about 1847. So the two sons were born after their parents’ marriage. This seems to eliminate the possibility of a misattributed paternity. If there was not a misattributed paternity, the elder Abner was not a descendant of Joseph1.
Whether the elder Abner was a patrilineal descendant of Joseph1 may never be known because there are no known living male descendants of Abner’s brother Joseph to test. If there was a living male patrilineal descendant of the elder Abner’s brother Joseph, he could be Y-DNA tested. If his results matched those of the descendants of Abner Milton and Joseph Thomas, then Abner could not have been a descendant of Joseph1. This becomes important because in the article it says the parentage of Joab (the elder Abner’s father) is “uncertain.”

Unfortunately, we run into the same problem in investigating the pedigree of Joab. While his only brother, Jacob, is speculative, John Beatty and Di Ann Vick in Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia and His Descendants could not find any record showing Jacob had a son who produced a son.2 It would be very helpful if there was a patrilineal descendant of Jacob that could be tested. If this descendant matched the Y-DNA of the descendant of Abner Milton and the descendant of Joseph Thomas we would know that Joab also was not a descendant of Joseph1. Through testing descendants from each line we might be able to isolate where the patrilineal bloodline stops from Joseph1.

Notes:
1 Ancestry.com. Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2008. Original data: Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002. Nashville, TN, USA: Tennessee State Library and Archives. Microfilm.

2Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight County, Virginia and His Descendants, pp. 364-365