The Parke Society and its Lineage Key system.

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The Parke Society is a surname organization founded in 1963, originally for descendants of Robert Parke, who came to America in 1630 from England. After a few years, the scope of the society was broadened to include all Park/e/s lineages in the United States and Canada with roots in the British Isles. With the advent of DNA testing in 2000, the Society has been able to genetically sort the many different lineages, thus enabling those who cannot trace their Park/e/s line back to an immigrant ancestor to connect to other related lines, thus helping many to break through their brick walls.

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Many years ago, one of the pioneer members of the Parke Society, David Livingston Parke, Sr., (1922 - 2011) who was Parke Society member number 13, devised a Lineage Key system (LK) which enables us to assign a one or two letter key to each individual Park/e/s lineage. The earliest identified Park/e/s ancestor in that line is designated as generation 01, his children as 02, and so on. This number precedes the one or two letter key, and each individual is assigned a number following the letter key, thus enabling us to identify any Park/e/s individual not only according to their distinct line, but their generation from the earliest known ancestor and by their unique individual number. Given how many different John Parks there are in the database, for instance, you can see how incredibly valuable such a system is for quickly and accurately identifiying any individual. 

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You will see this Lineage Key system designation used throughout this website as well as in the Park/e/s DNA Surname Project, so I hope this explanation will remove some of the mystery behind these letter-number identifiers.

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