Making Use of mtDNA

[Mark Young]

In the latest newsletter (10/5/2023) Peter once again mentions that mtDNA is of little use to genealogists. I can confirm that I have had no help with my family tree from the mtDNA test I took with FTDNA. I have one match at level 0, but our earliest known mtDNA ancestors lived on different continents, and we couldn't find any familiar names in each others' trees. No luck with level 1 matches, either.

Still, I have found mtDNA useful in one part of my tree. I have an ancestor named Anne Grenon, who lived in Nova Scotia around 1800 CE. The records from Nova Scotia in that period are not good at all, but previous researchers narrowed down her parents to either Francois Pierre Grenon and Marie Madeleine Breau, or Michel Grenon and Mary Ann Naugle.

One of Anne's mtDNA descendants tested as Native American. Marie Madeleine's mtDNA ancestor Anne-Marie was suspected to be a Native American. One of Anne-Marie's mtDNA descendants (in a different line) tested as Native American, with the same results in the tested area as Anne's descendant. Conversely we have no indication that Mary Ann's ancestors might have been Native American. And even if they were, they'd have come from a different part of the continent, making a match less likely. If I could get a result for one of Mary Ann's mtDNA descendants I could possibly confirm that Anne is the child of Francois Pierre and Marie Madeleine, instead of just strongly suspecting it, as I do now.

I have a similar situation in another part of my tree where mtDNA results might help. My ancestor Louisa Bayers lived a bit later than Anne did, but with a similar lack of records. Census records list (without names!) several young Bayers women in the area, split between two families. To find which family Louisa comes from, I'd have to:

1. Find the names of the mothers in those two families (I already have one of them).
2. Trace back their maternal lines, looking for other dau'ters.
3. Trace the female line descendants of those other dau'ters.
4. Test the mtDNA of one or more people on each side.
5. Hope the two sides come out different!
6. Find female line descendants of Louisa and test their mtDNA to see which side (if either) they match.

Part of the reason that mtDNA is much less useful than other DNA tests is the complexity of that process.

The other reason for the relative uselessness of mtDNA is step 5. I'm lucky in that I live in a melting pot (I have British, German, French and Native American ancestry). There is a good chance that my two Mrs. Bayers from step 1 had different mtDNA haplogroups. The smaller the area your ancestors came from, the more likely it is your research fails at step 5 because the two families of interest get the same mtDNA test results (mtDNA does not change very often, so a match may come from many generations into the past).

Anyway, that's my example to show that mtDNA testing is not completely useless (just mostly so). Maybe some of you will find somewhere in your tree that it might help you!

Does anyone else have any examples of mtDNA solving a family tree issue?

 

[peter]

mtDNA testing is useful if you have two samples to compare, but that's not how most people use DNA.

 

[cfbandit]

So far, my mtDNA test has been more helpful to another tester than to me, lol. But I did it originally for the science, less so for the genealogy.

In the case of the other tester, they had originally proposed a Native American woman was the matriarch of the family. With a match to me, it was clear that their matriarch was very, very English...likely not Native American.

In my case, I found a connection with another researcher who was researching my same matriarch and was able to point me to the delightful discovery that she is named by at least her first name on a lovely remembrance stone in Wigston Magna, which is pretty remarkable considering she was born around 1644.

After so many years of doing traditional genealogy and tracing my father's Y DNA line, it is a refreshing change to be pulling documentation and making a matrilineal genealogy.

I'm very much looking forward to the promised updates to the Discover tool and other information at FTDNA, including all the proposed new haplogroups as a part of the million mito project.