The Speak/e/s Family Association is Launching a Renewed Collaboration of DNA Testing with the Speaks Project
The Speak/e/s Family Association (SFA) Annual meeting was conducted in September 2023. During the business meeting the leadership proposed a bold, strategic step in deciding to fund DNA testing of Speake men as a collaborative project with the Speaks Project at Family Tree DNA.
The recommended proposal was adopted as follows:
“SFA authorize $3,000 as a budget line for DNA testing in conjunction with the Speaks Project at Family Tree DNA. The budget will provide Big-Y DNA testing and other genetic testing to strategically clarify the genetic genealogy of the Speak family. Testing will be authorized by the President of the SFA and the Administrators of the Speaks Project.”
At the time of that decision, the Administrators of the Speaks Project were the SFA member and internationally known Genetic Genealogist, Roberta Estes, and the fellow SFA member, Co-Administrator Henry Payne. Since that time, Roberta invited John Payne to also become a Co-Administrator of the Speaks Project and he has agreed.
With this partnership we are poised to advance our understanding of the genetic genealogy of the Speake family. A good understanding of genetic relationships provides a strong basis to focus our efforts in genealogy by giving the genealogist critical information for where to look for records.
Let us review what we have learned so far from the Speaks Project. As we read in the reprint from Roberta’s blog in the Summer Bulletin (Vol. 44, Iss. 2, read Roberta’s full blog post), the Project has shown that there is a Y-DNA match between descendants of Thomas Speake, the Immigrant, and a man in New Zealand with ancestors in Gisburn, Lancashire, UK. His documented ancestors lived in Gisburn before 1700 (when it was then part of the West Riding of Yorkshire). Other Lancashire men with the Speake surname living in the Ribble Valley near Gisburn have been tested and also show relatedness through DNA testing. From this evidence, we conclude that Thomas the Immigrant likely was born in the Ribble Valley near Gisburn.
The Project has also shown that lineages of descendants of Thomas’s sons can be differentiated, because descendants of Thomas’ son Bowling have unique markers not found in descendants of his son, John the Innholder. Roberta described this strategy in Chapter 4 of The Speak/e/s Family of Southern Maryland, by showing that the line of Aaron Luckey Speaks of Iredell County, NC most closely matches descendants of Bowling Speake. As additional Speake men test using Big-Y DNA, or upgrade their testing to that level, further markers may be identified to further differentiate lines of descendants from one another. It is also possible that we will find founding Immigrants other than Thomas of St. Mary’s City—but so far that has not happened.
The strategies that link lines back to a common ancestor often require all the available resources, both genealogical and genetic. The genealogy part of that cannot be ignored; we continue to need the best documentation we can develop from genealogy. Each of the strategies feeds into and supports the other: DNA matches suggest related people whose documents might be relevant to genealogy; and newly found documents suggest unknown relationships suggesting newly found Speake relatives to test.
The status of the collaboration can best be accomplished by updating information Roberta reported in her blog in the fall of 2022. The Speaks Family DNA Project has 151 members comprised of:
105 autosomal DNA testers
31 Speak Y-DNA testers
24 of whom are Thomas the immigrant descendants
11 Big-Y tests.
On the genealogical side of this collaboration we are collecting genealogies of lines that do not at this time connect to ancestors in The Speak/e/s Family of Southern Maryland, either because of missing documented ancestors (“brick walls”), or the lines link to unique immigration events (none of those has yet been documented). We will be posting these genealogies to the website and use them to identify living descendants to whom we can offer free DNA testing. We can also search through these genealogies to identify men who have already done Y-DNA tests at levels less than Big-Y, who would be strategic to have tested and to offer them free DNA Test upgrades to Big-Y and autosomal testing.
Some Speak/e/s lines for which we have not found connections include:
Hezekiah Speake/Speaks of Bourbon County Kentucky, b. ca 1760 in Prince George’s County Maryland, d. 1835 in Bourbon County, Kentucky. A member who recently joined SFA, the Rev. Noel Jules Dehner is a descendant of Hezekiah Speak of Bourbon County.
A number of Speaks families in Rowan and Iredell Counties of North Carolina listed in the book chapter written by Susan Speak Sills, Jeffrey Wills, and Dewaine Speaks. With DNA matches we are making progress.
James W. Speaks d. 1841, Loudoun County, Virginia. A member who recently joined SFA, Megan Speakes, is his descendant. Additionally, there are many descendants of him in the greater Washington, DC area.
Charles Everett Speaks, b. 1819 in Loudoun County, Virginia, d.1893 in Perry County, Ohio. Charles may be a brother of James W. (undocumented).
We as an Association will carry out this collaboration by addressing these, as yet unattached limbs of our family tree by:
Additional genealogical support to those individuals with queries,
Documenting and sharing of genealogies in addition to those in the Book by using our website as a repository for Speake genealogies,
Continuing cooperation with and funding for those doing DNA analysis to inform genealogical relationships in the Speaks Family Project at Family Tree DNA,
Identifying additional Speake lines, and
Accepting nominations of individuals to test strategically, working with members to obtain authorization for testing from these individuals (to make a nomination, contact one of the authors of this article).
We are excited to be building on the fruitful collaboration between The Speak/e/s Family Association and the Speaks Project at Family Tree DNA with renewed energy and tangible resources. We expect to see this partnership develop a deeper understanding of the genealogy and of the genetic connections within all the Speak/e/s families.
-- John Payne, Roberta Estes, and Henry Payne