We will look at Canada and the United States separately here, even though in some cases some Park/e/s families moved from one country to the other.
Canada
There are currently two somewhat distinct lineages in Canada under research. One is a Park lineage that came to Canada from northern England and the remaining lineages all appear to have emigrated from County Armagh in Northern Ireland.
Most of the County Armagh lines use the Parkes or Parks spelling of our surname. Over time, some of the County Armagh lineages moved to the United States, so there is some overlap in the research of these lines. In such instances, we will discuss and post pertinent resource documents pertaining to their time in Canada with a notation about where the relevant resource documents in the United States can be found in the United States section.
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United States
The section on Park/e/s lineages in the United States will likely contain the largest amount of content initially, as much of my research and that of others has been focused in the US for many years and much has been accumulated.
While all of these branches are genetically related to a common male Park/e/s ancestor, it is likely that the common ancestor may be back in either County Armagh, Northern Ireland or Scotland and these lines may descend from several different immigrant ancestors.
In most cases these immigrant ancestors have not been identified, but DNA testing is enabling us to get a better idea of when and how they connect in both place and time. Thanks to DNA testing, I believe we are only one or two generations away from discovering the immigrant ancestor for many of these United States lineages.
