Family trees and freaky digits

According to a recent article in Men's Journal, which everyone knows rivals JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) as a repository of arcane medical knowledge, if a man's ring finger is noticeably longer than his index finger, he might have a likelihood of having a longer penis, a higher IQ, a lower risk of heart attack, a higher risk of prostate cancer, more athletic talent, and more success as a financial trader.  This is great news!  I now know I don't have a high risk of prostate cancer.   :)

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Yesterday my brother took the bait and signed up for a two-free-week introductory offer from Ancestry.com and began searching our family history.  

A little background:  Outside of my immediate family I've never been too chummy with my relatives.  My dad was sort of the black sheep of his side of the family, and my mom wasn't very close to her side either, thinking they were a bit too loose and wild for her liking.  We would make the obligatory big family get-together every Christmas where I always felt out of place because I knew barely a handful of my kinfolks.  Frankly I never thought much about it until yesterday when bro began his research.

So far he's traced our dad's side back 14 generations to around 1530 in England.  Back then they spelled our name Parke.  Somewhere along the way the "e" was dropped.  The first record of a Parke in North America was around 1640 in *gulp* New Jersey.  It's interesting to follow the migration of the family south and west through Virginia, North and South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, and finally Texas, where I presume the wagon suffered a terminal breakdown.  I know my mom's grandfather was a doctor because I have his medical school diploma from Vanderbilt.  Both Dr. Blasingame and my great grandmother died before I was born, and the trail became rather cool before that.  It will be interesting to see what we can dig up.

Next will come finding out more about my kin, putting a face with a name.  It's gonna be interesting.  I wonder if any of the men had exceptionally long ring fingers?

S