The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a series of DNA markers on a gene, which is passed from mother to child. The mother and child will have identical mtDNA markers except for some rarely occurring mutations. Therefore people who can trace their ancestry back through an unbroken string of female predecessors to a common female ancestor will have identical or very similar mtDNA markers.

The distance between the earliest mentioned ancestor and the participant is measured by "transmission events." A transmission event is a birth. There is one transmission event from a mother to daughter. There are two transmission events from grandmother to granddaughter, etc. It is the technical term geneticists use to describe generational distance.

Because I believe that our maternal ancestors are equally as important as our male ancestors, participants who carry the mtDNA of our remote grandmothers have been included in this study. The mtDNA contributed by some of the participants was of a very common very type, and have numerous matches in the ftDNA database. Others, however, seem to be much less common, and have no matches at this point in the Cambridge Reference Sequence, which is the world standard for typing DNA.

The cost of determining the mtDNA haplogroup was included in the initial analysis. Therefore, the haplogroups reported here are not the predicted haplogroups, but the actual haplogroups. Studies are only now emerging which track the various haplogroups to geographic locations, and designate the racial identity of haplogroups. All of the haplogroups reported here are Caucasian: U, H, K, N, T, and W. Native American Indian haplogroups include A, B, C, D, and X.

Haplogroup H is the most common one in Europe, where about 48% of all women fall into this haplogroup. It is believed that there are 23 different Sub-haplogroups within H, but at present, tests for only Haplogroups 1 through 11 are cost effective. All of the participants who belong to H Haplogroup in this study have participated in the H Sub-haplogroup test. Only one, Jane McDonald, has been identified as falling within H1-H11. She is H7. The remaining women are currently designated as H*, pending cost effective test procedures which can identify their Sub-haplogroup.

The asterisk (N*) on the haplogroup of Sarah Blackwell has been added because, although broad a Macro-haplogroup identification is now available for Haplogroup N, Sarah's does not fall within any of the known N Sub-haplogroups.

I was especially pleased that the mtDNA for three of my ancestors was uncommon: Catherine Fine, Margaret Mashburn, and Rhoda Strain. I have spent 20+ years studying these remote grandmothers, and having an uncommon mtDNA gives credence to the conclusions that are presented, based on the mtDNA of those I believe to be their sisters.

As you click on the link for each of the mtDNA lineages presented below, you will see how many maternal matches have been reported to ftDNA for each individual, as of August 2005, after four years of testing. These number of matches are reported only in order to give an idea of the frequency that this unique mtDNA signature appears in the literature, so I will not continually update the number of matches.

If you think that you may be a member of our family and would like to contribute a mtDNA sample, you may obtain a kit at the following Souder site: Souder DNA