Tim, Diana & others,
Your responses to my message have been enlightening to me and perhaps to
others, so I extend my appreciation to you all.
Tim's point is well taken regarding making a distinction between the surname
and the person. It is possible that Peter was an Englishman, perhaps for
only a short time, with a non-English-derived name. Is this correct?
Diana's extensive and informative response shows the thoroughness of
analysis leading to her conclusion that the surname is Spanish, Italian, or
Portuguese in origin. Her extensive and careful work, as evidenced by her
census summary, is to be commended. Now I understand the basis for her
enthusiasm for an origin of the name to be from one of these three
countries.
For fun, I will venture a scenario based on these responses and adding a bit
of conjecture of my own:
-A male Moorish (source of haplotype J2a1b) invader in Italy (based on a
well-known & historical means of genetic dispersal) left his Y chromosome to
a (bastard?) son. Italy is chosen as the most likely candidate because of
the location of the greatest frequency of the haplotype J2a1b among the
three countries, Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
-This son, or later descendent, adopted the surname Carrico to accommodate
to the Italian language, or because it was the Italian mother's surname.
-An Italian Carrico male descendent of whatever generation, named perhaps
Pietro Carrico, migrated to England where he may have learned English.
-In England, leaving no male descendents (or if he did, his male line died
out), Pietro joined a group of 12 Englishmen who were transported to
Maryland by Samuel Dobson.
-Pietro's given name was anglicized to Peter (mistakenly written as
"Curricoe" by the English functionary who recorded the event) after landing
in Maryland in 1674.
-Peter Carrico (now using the anglicized given name and the correct and
current spelling of the surname) entered into service as an indentured
servant whereupon he was eventually awarded 50 acres of land.
-He married an unnamed English (probably) lass and then produced four
children. And the "rest is history" as they say.
Is any of this NOT plausible?
Thanks for the information and time.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: carrico-bounces(a)rootsweb.com [mailto:carrico-bounces@rootsweb.com] On
Behalf Of Diana Gale Matthiesen
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 3:19 PM
To: carrico(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [CARRICO] Another Look at Origins
Jim,
We do know that Peter was an immigrant. On 15 Jun 1674 in Charles Co., MD
(Patent Book 18, p. 80), Samuel Dobson came before the court and petitioned
for
"head-rights" for having transported 13 people to the province. A
"head-right"
meant that anyone bringing in a new colonist (at their expense) would be
rewarded with 50 acreas of land, so Samuel was requesting 650 acres. One of
those persons was "Peter Curricoe." On 17 Jun 1674, Samuel was awarded his
land. Peter was then indentured. He served the standard seven years after
which, in 1781, he was awarded the standard 50 acres of land.
As for changing his name from Pedro or Pero or Piero or whatever it was,
most
immigrants had their given name, if not their surname, Anglicized the minute
they stepped off the boat. Being always listed as Peter on his American
records
does not establish that he was English; it establishes that the clerks were
English.
As for using English names, such as Maidstone, after arriving in Maryland,
Peter
did not come to Maryland as a member of a group (of Italians or Spaniards or
Portuguese or whatever). Unlike, for example, my Pennsylvania Deutsch
ancestors, who came to southeastern PA by the boatload, settled together,
and
clung to their language and customs for decades (some, to the present day),
Peter apparently arrived alone. He was an indentured servant for seven
years,
so he had plenty of time to learn English before gaining his freedom; and he
would have had to assimilate to the culture around him or remain an
outsider.
As for what the spelling of his name indicates, to me it shrieks, not so
much
"Romance" languages, which would include French, Romanian, and some others,
but
most likely Italian, Portuguese or Spanish. You might be able to make a
case
for CARRICO being British (though I don't see it), but it is not remotely
Germanic or Scandinavian. My suspicions are supported by the fact that, in
all
the U.S. censuses, the only foreign-born CARRICOs have this derivation
(Italian,
Portuguese, or Spanish):
http://dgmweb.net/genealogy/Census/Carrico/CarricoCensusSummary.shtml
One way to test the ethnicity of a name is to go to the major online
pedigree
databases and search on the surname. If you do a search on CARRICO born in
England at WorldConnect, you get ten hits, nine of which errors (they're of
Peter and his daughter, Jane) and the tenth is in 1889, which, even if
correct,
does not speak to the origin of CARRICO. If I search on CARRICOE or
CURRICOE
born in England, I get no hits, at all. Likewise, Scotland, Ireland,
Sweden,
Norway, Finland, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. If I search on
France,
all I get is erroneous hits for Peter and his children.
The other database to try is the LDS database, especially as it includes a
great
many non-U.S. birth records. The difficulty searching there is that their
kludge of a search engine won't allow you to search on just a surname if you
include a birthplace, so you have to enter just the surname, then wade
through
all the hits. Doing so for CARRICO gives us one hit for Guatemala, a bunch
of
erroneous hits for France (of Peter and his children), 13 hits for Mexico;
29
hits for South America (Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, etc.); 47 for "Southwest
Europe," which includes CARRICO records for Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
Nothing
for anywhere else.
Then there is the matter of place names. There are three places in the
world
named Carrica, one each in Spain, Portugal, and Mozambique; and there are
six
named Carrico, one in Portugal, two in Mozambique, and three in the U.S. (in
VA
and MD).
Lastly, there is the DNA evidence. We are haplogroup J2a1b. Please go to
this
page, scroll down to Figure 2, and see the map labeled J-M67, which is the
distribution of the CARRICO subclade:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1181965
The highest concentrations are in Italy and east of the Black Sea (Turkey,
Armenia, Georgia, and southern Russia). J2a1b is almost nonexistent in the
British Isles and northern Europe.
I don't think we need to take a step backwards and say we "haven't a
clue"
to
Peter CARRICO's origin. We have the orthography of the name, the current
distribution of the name, the distribution of placenames, and the
distribution
of the DNA subclade all telling us the most likely origin is Portugal,
Spain, or
Italy. I'll get a big kick out of it being something more exotic, like
Turkish
or Russian, but that's really less likely (I can't speak for Turkish or
Armenian
names, but CARRICO is not remotely Slavic). One of the major reasons to do
DNA
testing is to get you looking in the right places for your ancestors. I
can't
see, at this point, ignoring what the DNA is telling us by looking
elsewhere.
If we really want to answer the question of our origins, we need to make it
a
top priority to bring European-born CARRICOs, or American CARRICOs with a
known
European origin, into the DNA project.
Diana
-----Original Message-----
From: carrico-bounces(a)rootsweb.com On Behalf Of Jim Carico
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 12:57 PM
To: carrico(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [CARRICO] Another Look at Origins
In the discussion during the last few days, I am troubled by the
widely-held
assumption that the origin of the Carrico surname must be found among
the
Romance language speakers of Southern Europe, particularly, the
Portuguese.
Below, I would offer some contravening arguments in favor of a
northern,
particularly Anglo, origin instead.
First, consider details of the name of the "first" known North American
Carrico/Carico, Peter Carricoe (do we have proof he was the "immigrant"?).
It seems to me that we have overlooked some obvious clues here that would
be
of help.
Let's dissect the name.
1. "Peter" is not a common given name in Southern Europe, but is common
in Northern Europe and in Britain. Are we assuming that the
Spanish/Portuguese/Italian immigrant changed his name from "Pedro/Pietro"
to
the English equivalent, "Peter" when he stepped ashore?
2. It seems that we have focused on a Southern European origin partly
because of that terminal vowel sound, "oh", because it is so common there.
Peter's surname with a terminal "e" after the last syllable with an
"oh"
sound is not common in Southern Europe, but is found in English names with
a
terminal "oh" sound, e.g., Bledsoe, Steptoe, Monroe.
Further, consider other English surnames with that "oh" sound such as:
Barlow,
Bristowe, etc.
3. How about the double "rr" in the name? Look at some British (I
assume) surnames with this combination of consonants: Barrow, Burrow,
Barrett (or Barrette), Barr, Currier, Harris, etc. Those of us who
struggled to pronounce "burrito" correctly, may tend to associate this
combination of consonants mostly with a southern European
language. But why bother with wrestling with trills and other features of
the
double "rr" as it is pronounced in Southern Europe when we
have a source
of
the double "rr" spelling in Northern Europe? And regarding
the
pronunciation,
haven't we
heard bit of a trill in the speech of native Scots and Irish, e.g.,
Edinburgh, Londonderry? We need look no further than when considering
pronunciations in problems with transcriptions and record keeping.
What about the country of origin? It follows that as we concentrate on
Southern Europe as a source of the surname because of its current
pronunciation, we are obliged to look there for the origin of the
immigrant.
But if we relieve ourselves of these assumptions, then we can be free
to
look elsewhere. Consider the following argument: Probably in those early
years immigrants to the middle Atlantic coast were from English-speaking
countries, and so the weight of numbers is in favor of the latter for a
source of our first Carricoe. Additionally, a perusal of early given names
in our Carrico/Carico genealogies and names of their estates, e.g.,
"Maidstone," are all English names. Even today, new immigrants tend to
use
names formed from the language of the "old country" for at
least one
generation.
Therefore, given the above assumptions, we need to apply the fewest
contortions to derive the first known Carricoe from an English-speaking
country rather than from Southern Europe. My main purpose in this
discourse
is to encourage researchers to pursue a wider range of possibilities
for
the
origin of our first Carricoe; it is not my intention to prove that
the
name
is English or any other derivation because I have no proof to
offer...yet.
Jim
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