Revelations in DNA: The Lambert/ Pace Discovery

2018 has proved to be a year chocked full of amazing, shocking, confusing and mysteriously wonderful genealogical and dna-related discoveries.

I took the DNA test through Ancestry. com back in 2013. A few years later, a possible distant relative convinced me to download the raw data and upload it to Gedmatch.com. Since then, I have been trying to, and suceeding in some cases, to connect the dots. Sometimes dna has corroborated things I've been told or believed. In other cases, it has turned the whole lot of it upside down.

In March, I was gifted the most wonderful surprise. I had recieved a message from a very close dna match. When I saw the number of centimorgans we shared, I went "Whoa". Ancestry doesn't give you the exact relationship, unless it is a parent/child relationship. It suggests a level of "cousinhood" and in the case of close relatives who are not parent/child, it suggests, "1st cousin or closer". The match politely suggested we might be 1st cousins. I personally know and can name all of my first cousins on both sides of my family. I have 7 on my mother's side and 7 on my father's side. As far as I knew, I had no first cousins that I was not personally aware of.



Then I looked at the matches family tree. That's when my mind was blown. I questioned the match about the validity and was asking for proof of things. I was given the story of the matches birth, and where he was raised, etc and how he had come about the information. At the same time I was texting my children on group text "You're not going to believe this!" My youngest son, who was still in the military at the time, and just recently ended his 12 years of service, was doing some quick research of his own. He sent links to the matches social media accounts. It took 5 seconds of looking at his Facebook page to toss all doubt and need for any proof out of the window.

He was the spitting image of my father. Taller, gorgeous blue eyes instead of brown, but every other part of his face, his nose, his smile, was my Dad, twenty years younger looking. I had a little brother!!

Since then, we've spoken and chatted and skyped and met in person just a few months ago. He has a wonderful family and they are wonderful people and I am over the moon happy about having a little brother to talk to, but a little sad I didn't know him all of this time.

My Dad was in the military and met his mother in Germany. She was British. My brother was born nearly 3 years after I was and I never knew he existed. Until a dna test united us.

While he was here, I decided to ask him to take it one step further, since he had already taken a dna test.

I had not researched my Dad's paternal line too fully or carefully as he, his second wife and my Uncle had already done a good deal of "old fashioned papertrail" researching themselves. So, at some point recently, I decided to follow those copied trees for the Stanly County Lambertsmyself, but something wasn't adding up.



We were definately Lamberts. I dna matched to a great many people who shared Great Grandparents, Great Great Grandparents, Great Great Great Grandparents and Great Great Great Great Grandparents with me.

The patriarch of Stanly County Lamberts is one Rev. John Lambert, a Primitive Baptist Minister, who founded the Liberty Hill Baptist Church in the Red Cross/Frog Pond area, along with a William Rushing. Rev. Lambert had preached at Meadow Creek during the 1842-1843 year, but most staunchly attended Bear Creek, near the Stanly/Cabarrus County line. That he was the progenitor of our line and the Lambert Community Lamberts, I have no doubt, especially now.



But where did he come from? He was not a young man when he arrived here, in his 50's, I believe. He didn't just appear from nowhere.

Some people hooked him to the wagon of a John Lambert from Chatham County, NC who married Mary Bray, daughter of a wealthy Chatham man named Henry Bray. Many trees on ancestry have his wife Phida as "Mary Phida Bray".

There's two problems with this: One, after digging through everything I can find on the John Lambert of Chatham, Henry Bray and Mary Bray Lambert, I can't find anything with her name as Mary Phida, or anything close. She's just "Mary". Second, this John died and left a will before 1850 and my John clearly shows up in Stanly County in the 1850 census living with his wife Phida in the Furr Community next to sons Jonathan and Nathan and son-in-law Pleasant Almond.

That John left a will. The children he names in the will are not the children of John Lambert in Stanly County, NC.

Now, he had to be somewhere before he came here, and I hope to determine that,but he wasn't two of the Johns that the ancestry family trees are trying to connect him to.





But back to my brother. I had asked him to take a Y-dna test. A Y-DNA test differs from an Autosomal DNA test in that it can only be taken by a genetic male and it traces the male line from father to son, or rather, from son to father on and on backwards in time, while an Autosomal test connects to dna inherited from both parents. A smiple explanation from Wiki explains:


A Y chromosome DNA test (Y-DNA test) is a genealogical DNA test which is used to explore a man's patrilineal or direct father's-line ancestry. ... If their test results are a perfect or nearly perfect match, they are related within a genealogical time frame.

I ordered the test from Family Tree DNA, as Ancestry.com does not offer this test. They explained it this way:




With the Y test, I hoped to evaporate the mystery of Rev. John Lamberts origins, and boy, did we. My brother tested, I mailed it off and one day, about 6 weeks later, in late October, an email arrived. The results were in.



Like a child peeking around the corner on Christmas morning to see what Santa has brought, I logged on to FTDNA. It have a Haplo-group, etc. and explained it's one of the most common ones in Europe, I was not surprised. I was pretty sure our paternal line was out of Europe. Just one look at us can tell us that. It was when I clicked on matches that I went into shock. There sat my brother's test number smack in the middle of a sea of Pace's. Yes, the last name "Pace". I scrolled and scrolled. Pace, Pace, Pace, Pace. Some of them gave there oldest known ancestor. Some didn't. The ones who did, by and large, were descended from a Richard Pace of Jamestown, Virginia who married an Isabella Smythe. He was from England, originally. The ones who gave a different name were more recent ancestors, who I have come to learn, were themselves descended from Richard Pace of Jamestown.

I kept scrolling and by the end discovered that we were not the only Lamberts in the group. There were 3 others. One had clearly put our very own Rev. John Lambert, born 1772 as his oldest known paternal ancestor.

FTDNA also offers different dna study groups one can join. There's one for early colonists of North Carolina, one on the Lumbee Indians of Robeson County, but most are for studies of a specific surname. Most allow women to join, but some only if she can talk a male relative of that surname to provide DNA. I joined both the Lambert and Pace Groups. I also joined the Pace Society, with this new found information that we were biological Paces. The Pace Society was already familiar with the Lambert connection. We were not the first.



Once the Pace Group applied my brothers test results, we got a few more answers that verified what I was seeing on FTDNA. He (or we, as we share this paternal line) fall into the "3A" Group. This group is descended from Richard Pace of Jamestown through specific Great Grandsons. This is our group:



Richard Pace of Jamestown, Virginia (Groups 3a and 3b)
Group 3a lineages

1. Richard Pace (ca 1585-Jamestown, VA) md 1608 Isabella Smyth
.2. George Pace (ca 1609-c1655) md Sarah Maycock
..3. Richard Pace II (c1638 Charles City Co.,VA-c1677 VA) md. Mary (?Baker)
...4. Richard Pace III (c1661-76 Charles City Co.,VA-1736-38 Bertie Co., NC) md. ca 1699 Rebecca
....5. Richard Pace IV (c1700 VA-bef.1776 Edgefield Dist., SC) md. ca 1723 Elizabeth Cain
......6. Richard Pace (c1724-c1784 St. Augustine, FL) md. Aurelia Dupree
.......7. Thomas Pace (ca 1775-? Nova Scotia) md. 1803 Mary Smith
........8. Ebenezer Pace (28 Jan 1809 Canada-6 Mar 1885 Canada) md. Elizabeth Isnor
.........9. Charles S. Pace (26 July 1879 Canada-2 Nov 1936 US) 
..........10. Father of #140013
...........11. #140013
......6. Silas Pace (c1726 VA-c1802 Edgefield Dist., SC) md. ca 1747 Mary Newsome
.......7. William Pace (-bef. May 1823 Bibb Co., GA) md. 1) ca 1800 Bathena Cox. 2) 1823 Patsy Hixon
........8. William Pace (GA-btwn. 1860-66) md. 1847 Mary Ann Pollard
.........9. Grandfather of #14184
.........10. Father of #14184
..........11. #14184
.......7. Son of Silas Pace (died ca 1838 AL) 
........8. Bartley M Pace (Apr 1837 Talledega Co., AL-1930 Wood CO., TX)
.........9. Clarence Pace (1899-1971 TX0
..........10. William P. Pace (19 Jan 1870 Garden Valley, Mith Co., TX-12 Jan 1951 Wood Co., TX)
...........11. #108957 
......6. Drury Pace (1745 Craven Co. or Northampton Co, NC-1801 Richmond Co., GA) md. Mary Bussey
.......7. William Pace (1772 SC-1835 Jasper Co., GA) md. Lucretia Robinson Gardner or Lucrecia Lazenby
........8. Dreadzil Evans Pace (25 Dec 1805-1852 Talladega Co., AL) md. Melita Leverett
.........9. William S. Pace (1826 GA-1863 Indianapolis, IN) POW md. Mary Jane Dozier
..........10. Grandfather of #6352
...........11. Father of #6352
............12. #6352
.........9. Dreadzil Lee Evans Pace (Ashland, Clay Co. AL)
..........10. Grover Cleveland Pace
...........11. #179032
.........9. Richard Randall Pace
..........10. Amos Gideon Pace
...........11. Father of #144464
............12. #144464
......6. Barnabus Pace (1747-1831 Elbert Co., GA)
.......7. John Pace (1800 Elbert Co., GA-1859 Calhoun Co., GA)
........8. Noel (Noah) William Pace (1826 Elbert Co., GA-1902 Terrell Co., GA)
.........9. William Lumpkin Pace (1865 Calhoun Co., GA-1937 Terrell Co., GA)
..........10. Father of #119455
....5. Thomas Pace (1704-1765) or John Pace (1668-1727) ??
.....6. Thomas Pace (1750-1795) or John Pace (1696-1761) ??
......7. Hardy Pace (1784-1836 Cochran, GA)
.......8. Thomas B. Pace (1813-1890)
........9. Grandfather of #10428
.........10. Father of #10428
..........11. #10428
...4. John Pace (1668 Charles City Co., VA-1727 Bertie Co., NC) md. Elizabeth Lowe
.....6. William Pace (c1716-20-25 Feb 1790 Franklin Co., NC) md. 1) Mary Evans 2) Jemima
......7. George Pace (c1740-50 Franklin Co., NC-c1830-40 Marion Co., SC) md. Ann Pill
........8. Archibald Pace (c1780-90 NC-c1828-30 Marion Co., SC) md. Mary Roe (War of 1812)
.........9. Daniel Pace (1821 Marion Co., SC-1870-80 Marion Co., SC) md. Rebecca Brown
..........10. William James Pace (10 Aug 1846 Marion Co., SC-14 Nov 1903 Marion Co., SC) md. Ann Della Floyd (CSA veteran)
...........11. Father of #55605
............12. #55605
......7. William Pace (c1750-c1837 TN) md. Ruth Lambert
.......8. James Pace (23 Jan 1778 NC-23 Dec 1814 Battle of New Orleans) md. Mary Ann Loving
........9. William Pace (23 Jul 1806 Double Springs, Rutherford, TN-21 Sept 1876 New Harmony, Washington, UT) md. Margaret Nichols
.........10. Grandfather of #15548
..........11. Father of #15548
...........12. #15548
.........10. Wilson Daniel Pace (27 July 1831 Murfreesboro, Rutherford, TN-1899 Thatcher, Graham, AZ) md. Ann Moriah Redd, Elizabeth Lee
..........11. William Wilson Pace (8 June 1857-10 Sept 1931) md. Catherine Rankin
...........12. Willard C. Pace (18 Sep 1889-14 Feb 1968) md. Martha Layton
............13. Scott Layton Pace (5 Nov 1917-2003) md. Sarah Beth Lines
.............14. #117474
..........11. James Byrum Pace (1872 New Harmony, Washington, UT-1933 Gallup, McKinley, NM) md. Adeline Savage
...........12. Father of #14155
............13. #14155
.........10. Harvey Alexander Pace (12 Oct 1833 Murfreesboro, Rutherford, TN-) md. Elizabeth Ann Redd
..........11. William Harvey Pace (25 Nov 1854 Palmyra, UT-15 Feb 1879) md. Hannah Marie Goddard
...........12. William Harvey Pace Jr. (5 Apr 1875 New Harmony, UT-29 Sept 1947) md. Kathryn Middleton
............13. Carlos Middleton Pace (1902)
.............14. #163053
..........10. John Alma Lawrence Pace (2 Feb 1841 Murfreesboro, Rutherford, TN-)
...........11. William Alma Pace (28 Sept 1875 New Harmony, UT)
............12. #197970
........9. James Pace (1811 Rutherford Co., TN-1888 AZ) md. 1) Lucinda Gibson Strickland 2) Ann Webb 3) Margaret Calhoun
.........10. William Byram Pace (1832 Rutherford Co., TN-1907 UT) md. Epsy Jane Williams  (son of Lucinda)
..........11. Grandfather of #7833
...........12. Father of #7833
............13. #7833
..........11. William James Pace (1854-1908) md. 1880 Mary Elizabeth Gines
...........12. Archibald Clarence Pace (1901-1981) md. Josie Alean Sperry  
............13. #63672
.........10. Warren Sidney Pace (28 Dec 1837 Shelby Co., IL-21 Dec 1903 Payson, UT) (son of Lucinda)
..........11. Sidney David Pace (1 Jan 1858 Payson, UT-22 Apr 1930 Montrose Co., CO)
...........12. Grandfather of #6429
............13. Father of #6429
.......8. Isaac Pace (1798 GA-27 Oct 1857 Perry Co., TN)
........9. John Pace (1832 TN-5 Jan 1865 Columbus, OH) md. Minerva Jane Batton
.........10. Grandfather of #6366
..........11. Father of #6366
...........12. #6366
.........10. William Wesley Pace (12 Apr 1856-20 Sep 1935) md. 1879 Georgia Miller
..........11. Alzo Bryan Pace Sr. (15 Mar 1896-15 Nov 1967) md. 1918 Eunice Gertrude Etheridge
...........12. Alzo Bryan Pace Jr. (1928-1992) md. 1957 Marcia Joyce Cantrell
............13. #132805
.........10. Jefferson Jeremiah Pace (1861-1935) (no marriage) Mattie Smith md. William Patterson
..........11. Wilmot Malcom Patterson (15 Nov 1889-21 Aug 1969) md. Elva Gertrude Buchanan
...........12. Hobert Orland Patterson (5 Mar 1914-24 Nov 1902) md. Loretta Dickson
............13. #128919 Patterson surname



Narrows it down a little, but still a wide open field of questions to ponder. To get more answers, I began emailing the other Pace matches who were Lamberts. One was descended from Rev. John Lamberts son William Frederick Lambert who moved to Tishomingo County, Mississippi about 1840ish. Another was descended from his son George W. Lambert. The other I didn't have to guess as he was already in my family tree and a third cousin of my Dad. Not only does this verify that Fred and George, who both moved to other states, were sons of Rev. John Lambert, it nails down Rev. John Lambert as our common ancestor.



But how, and when, did our Pace line change to Lambert?

I had already created a booklet of all my matches with Lambert in their family trees on ancestry.com. Some of them are on multiple sites, like gedmatch and Family Tree, that has the data you can copy and paste to DNA Painter, so that you can compare sections of DNA and what came from which ancestor or family. There were two things I noticed. One, all of the closer cousins, 4th cousins down, were descended from Rev. John Lambert, albeit, they may have taken the tree back to ancestors that are not ours. Second, in the distant cousin group, 5th to 8th, a certain group of Lamberts kept popping up, that of 3 brothers who had settled in Southside Virginia (Lunenburg, Mecklenburg and Brunswick Counties), John, William and Hugh Lambert.

I've been to Mecklenburg and Brunswick researching my mother's family who emigrated from there, the Davis and Winfield families, several times. I kept running into the Lambert name and wondered, just wondered, if my mother's and father's ancestors could have known each other in the Pre-Revolutionary days. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence at the time. But now, not so much.

One thing I have learned in my years of research is that different entangled and intermarried family groups would travel in little packs together. From Virginia to North Carolina, from NC to Tennesse or Alabama, from Tennessee to Mississippi or Missouri or Alabama to Arkansas to Texas. And so on. Some would stay at each place they landed, and others would move on. Some took the same roads to the same places, just at different times. So, not so much of a coincidence, but a historical trend.




But I thought you were not Lamberts, you might ask.

If you follow the Pace decent list above, you might notice about halfway down, seven generations from Richard of Jamestown, the name of a William Pace who married Ruth Lambert.

The Pace Society informs that our 3a Group of dna matches form 3 Subgroups:

1) Richard Pace b 1690
2) John Pace who married Anne Russell
3) William Pace who married Ruth Lambert.

The information I recieved from the other Pace/Lambert matches was so helpful, I decided to take the next step. I copied an pasted my first email, and sent it to all of my brothers Pace matches. Took me about 2 days to complete the task. And the answers started coming in:

"My line includes William Pace who married Ruth Lambert".

"My sons line stems from William Pace and Ruth Lambert Pace".

Another listed the whole line from Richard and Isabella, to William and Ruth and on down to himself.

There were a few who came from John and Anne Russell Pace and another from Richard IV, but the Pace Society numbers the matches in groups of 1 to 4 with 1 being the most closely related to you and 4's being the most distant. Our closest is the William and Ruth group.

It looks like William Pace who married Ruth Lambert must be our ancestor. Notice I said William who married, not William AND Ruth. As the test goes up the male line, we are descended from the man, but not neccessarily from the woman.




One of the Lambert/Pace's has done quite a bit of research, traveling to Jamestown and even to Wapping, England where our ancestors Richard and Isabella were married in 1608. She informs that the Pace's and Lamberts were neighbors in Virginia. The 3 Lambert brothers of whom my distant dna cousins on ancestry descend, John, William and Hugh. Here's the kicker. William Lambert of Mecklenburg County, Virginia was the father of Ruth who married William Pace, son of George Pace and Obedience Worsham and grandson of John Pace and Elizabeth Lowe.

So although we are not Lamberts up the paternal line, we seem to be Lamberts, descended from these Southside Viginia Lamberts, down a maternal line.

William Pace married Ruth Lambert in 1771. Rev. John Lambert was born in 1772.

Was William Pace the father of John Lambert?

How and why did the surname change from Pace to Lambert?

Where did Rev. John Lambert grow up? Was he raised by Ruth Lambert Pace's family?

William and Ruth Pace did not die and leave an orphaned child. In fact, they moved to Clark County, Georgia and then on to Rutherford County, Tennessee where William Pace died. They had a significantly large family their oldest recorded son named William, born a few years after Rev. John Lambert.

So much research to do. First on Rev. John and his children looking for hints and hoping for answers, next on the Paces.

But here's the Revelation: If you are a Stanly County Lambert, or descend from the Stanly County Lamberts, you are biologically a descendant of Richard Pace and Isabella Smythe of Wapping, England and Jamestown, Virginia.