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Author: Diana_Gale_Matthiesen
Surnames: Carrico
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.carrico/410.3/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
Y-DNA testing clearly shows that Peter CARRICO, 1674 immigrant to Maryland, was not
African or Amerindian. His Y-DNA haplogroup (J2a4b) indicates an Anatolian-Mediterranean
origin. Please see Map E on this page:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1181965/figure/FG2/
"Melungeon" is not a race or ethnicity, it's a culture, so it has no genetic
signature that unites it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeon
And there's nothing to suggest that Peter or any of his descendants were part of that
culture. CARRICO is not a recognized Melungeon surname, they are not remotely a genetic
match with any of them so far tested, and they aren't known to have lived in their
communities.
If you look at the early census records of the counties where the Melungeons mainly
settled, namely, Hawkins and Hancock Cos., TN, and Lee Co., VA, you find that no CARRICOs,
at all, lived in Tennessee before 1860 and only one CARRICO family lived briefly in Lee
Co., VA:
http://dgmweb.net/Census/Carrico/VA/CarricoCenTime-VA.html#Lee
I'm stretching my memory here, but I do not recall that any of the early CARRICOs were
labeled black or mulatto, which they likely would have been had they been Melungeon. The
only antebellum census record of an African-American CARRICO I've found, so far, is an
Amy CARRICO (b. ca. 1780 in MD) living in the 1850 census of Spencer Co., KY, neither of
which locations suggests she was Melungeon:
http://dgmweb.net/Census/Carrico/KY/CarricoCenTime-KY.html#Spencer
Given that many American CARRICO families once owned slaves, we would expect that there
were CARRICO males who fathered children with them, and we do find African-American
families in the U.S. census who are surnamed CARRICO - after the Civil War, when
African-American began being enumerated in the census. Through Y-DNA testing, it would be
possible to determine whether any of the living male "black" CARRICOs are
biological descendants of Peter or whether they simply adopted their owner's surname
when freed.
Bottom line: DNA evidence proves an Anatolian-Mediterranean origin of Peter CARRICO. His
surname suggests an origin in Portugal, Spain, or Italy. History and his haplogroup
suggest he might have been a Jewish Converso.
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