Females - Week 9: 52 Ancestors

Joined by mtDNA

Earlier this year, I posted a photo in Facebook of my sister, her daughter and me, stating that we all shared the same mtDNA. Well, I expect we do - I am the only family member to have bothered spending the money to see.  Family Tree DNA, the only genealogical company to offer this service found that my mitochondrial DNA is haplogroup H.  To be precise, I belong to subgroup H1a1a.  I shall not go into the science - it wasn't my favourite subject at school.

Neither have I found mtDNA to be much use in solving my family tree brick walls.  I simply have not got enough maternal great aunts in my mother's ancestry.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed down to both females and males by their mother, but only females pass it on to their children. It does not mutate much, less than one in a hundred according to Scientific American.  It is suggested that 12 generations of females are likely to carry identical mtDNA. . The H haplogroup is one of the most common in Europe.  Approximately 40% of the female population shares it. This haplogroup is thought to have originated near Syria and has since spread throughout Europe, particularly Spain and to North Africa.

At the moment, I can only trace my presumed mitochondrial DNA back five generations, all in Kent, England.  My mitochondrial 3x great grandmother was Elizabeth Terry who was born in Dartford, Kent in 1789 and was buried in Ightham, Kent in 1876, having first married Henry Ashby who died in 1853 and then her lodger William Vaughan, another agricultural labourer in 1867. This family must have been very poor - they were living on the Ightham Common, next door to one of Elizabeth's married daughters and her family. Elizabeth Terry's great granddaughter Kate Palmer - my birth grandmother - was also living there with her grandmother Elizabeth Ashby in 1891.

Ancestry has a suggestion that Elizabeth Terry's mother was Ann West from the neighbouring village of Plaxtol but I cannot prove that.

The mitochondrial DNA extends down another two generations from me, since my sister's daughter also has a daughter.  I shall probably not live to see if it goes any further since my gorgeous little grandniece is only eight years old.  Unless customs change dramatically, she won't think about having children for another twenty to thirty years.