For many, many years Curtis has been trying to find the origins of the Pigman family and the Pigman name, without a lot of success.  When asked what he wanted for Christmas last year (2009) he said he wanted a Y-DNA test, hoping that it might help him on his journey to find his surname origins.  The results have been rather surprising.  Basically his Y-DNA says that his Pigman line is of Italian descent!

As far as we know, until recently Curtis has been the ONLY Pigman to do any type of DNA testing for genealogical purposes.  We have scoured the Internet and cannot find any others, SO we are starting a Pigman DNA project in the hope that we can get other Pigmans interested enough to join and have their Y-DNA tested.

Y-DNA is the DNA that is passed through the male line only, from father to son, father to son…etc.  It can be very complex.  Here is a very good link that breaks it down and makes DNA a bit easier to understand: http://www.stevemorse.org/genetealogy/dna.htm This site is really informative and has very good graphics.

A few months ago we spoke with the daughter of an elderly man from Maryland, a descendant of John Pigman II, son of John Pigman the original immigrant.  He was interested in the idea and had his Y-DNA tested, making him the second Pigman ever to do genealogical DNA testing.  This man’s results as compared to Curtis’ showed that there was a genetic distance of 4 between them and a 49% chance that they shared a common ancestor within the last 29 generations.  That works out to approximately 870 years!

We are not genetic specialists by any means, however, John Pigman, the original immigrant was living 300 years ago.  It would appear that the results between Curtis and the gentleman from Maryland would suggest that IF they share a common ancestor it is not one as recent as John Pigman, but one much farther back in time.  What this might mean is that perhaps not all the Pigmans in America were descended from ONE immigrant. 

There are theories within the family that there was another immigrant.  The late Polly Kelleher, one of the authors of John Pigman and his Descendants had been gathering information and investigating a theory of another immigrant.  Theories of the Pigman origin abound within the family.  These will be explored in detail in another essay on this website (currently under construction) entitled Exploring the Pigman Origins. 

The main purpose of this page is to let Pigmans around the world know that we are attempting to rally interest in a full-blown Pigman Y-DNA project.  The more male Pigmans who will have their Y-DNA tested, the more information we will have to work with to discover the origin and perhaps it will even help us to figure out if there was indeed another immigrant.

If you are a male Pigman and you are interested in participating please click on the link and contact us for more details.