mtDNA? (in paper trail terms)

[rsel]

I see that FTDNA has a special offer ($139) for the full mt, which includes 'More refined results for genealogical purposes'. Is it worth it?  I've not really got any Christmas present wishes at the moment.

Hi, I have done the full mtDNA test, and at this stage its not been very useful.   I only have a handful of matches and they are quite far out in time (high genetic distances), so don't stand much chance of linking up to them. I am therefore looking at it as a long term investment, in the hope that as more people test it will be become more useful.

Richard

[Gadget]

Thank you  both for further comments 

I think I'll do some more clustering among the matches that I have. The furthest back I get for certain is a 3 x great (Elizabeth)  who was born in 1781. I know her mother's name was Catherine and the full name of her father but just can't find a marriage for them or a suitable birth for Catherine. We then, probably,  get into patronymics.

She would be my 4 x ggrandmother, so I'm looking for 5th cousins (+/- with removes).
 

Gadget

[squawki11]

A short answer is "No"! Perhaps because MtDNA changes very little over time, possibly taking 1000 years between a "genetic distance 0" and a "genetic distance 1" match, although there can be exceptions. Another way to look at it within paper trail times is check your matches along your maternal lineage and see if any have exactly the same MtDNA Haplogroup...you may be lucky, they should have, given the period between changes, but how often is it displayed in Gedmatch? Hopefully you'll have many matches in FTDNA, but don't be disappointed to discover not a single paper trail verifiable match, despite your having, possibly, a few pages of "genetic distance 0" matches. It's much the same with Y-DNA. So we're stuck with what we can find from atDNA and current paper records. FTDNA name projects might be productive; area projects and of course specific MtDNA projects perhaps worth joining and asking coordinators "what could/should I do next?"

[Gadget]

Thanks, squawki 

I'm not sure that it would be a good investment unless there are significant improvements and matches in the next 2 decades. I'm in my 70s now 

P.S. I have my data on Ancestry, My Heritage, FTDNA and Gedmatch

[squawki11]

You could look upon it as an investment for your family. Perhaps with your having done all the ground work, one of them may continue with your project. Wishful thinking, perhaps and in the end you could just choose to be mildly self indulgent and treat yourself to the FTDNA works since if you have tested with them already, they have your sample and with coupons/discount you could think of it as a xmas/birthday/whatever you choose present to yourself. Go for it!

[DevonCruwys]

You would be highly unlikely to get a match that would help you with this line. Even if you have an exact mtDNA match with the highest resolution test (the full mtDNA sequence test) you could still potentially share common ancestors over 1000 years ago. Also remember that mtDNA only traces the direct maternal line. It doesn't represent all the ancestors on your mother's side. See the ISOGG Wiki article on mtDNA tests:

https://isogg.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA_tests

[Gadget]

Thank you 

I am aware of what you say. It is just my direct maternal line that I was interested in.

[hdw]

I've posted about this before, don't know where, don't know when, but never mind, when you get old people forgive you for repeating yourself.
The best thing I can say about mtDNA testing - i.e. testing your direct female line back from your mother - is that an interesting pattern of ancestry can emerge. Some of my closest mtDNA matches on FTDNA have an earliest known mitochondrial ancestor (ancestress?) in northern Ireland, in Co. Antrim or Down, with a Scottish surname. What the Americans would call "Scotch-Irish". My earliest known mtDNA forebear Nancy Howat was in Belfast in the 1790s.  And my other close  matches are either Norwegian or Norwegian-American. My mtDNA haplogroup is J1c2.

The Oxford geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer has a map in his book "The Blood of the Isles" showing J people moving from Norway into Scotland in the Neolithic period. So I believe my mitochondrial line probably derives from that ancient migration to Scotland, or of course it might be more recent, from settlement by Norwegian Vikings just over a thousand years ago.

It's amazing to think that the ultimate J ancestor ("Jasmine" to Bryan Sykes of Oxford Ancestors) was a woman who lived in the vicinity of what's now Syria many millennia ago, given that she has so many descendants in north and north-west Europe.

Harry

[Eric Hatfield]

Sorry to come to this so late, but here's my experience.

My biggest brick wall now is my maternal grandmother, who was adopted. I hoped an mtDNA result would help so I did the full test. It has only been marginally helpful.

• No matches have proved useful (so far).
• When I look at present location of matches, the two most common countries are Ireland and Finland. I had thought that maybe my grandmother's uncertain mother may have been from Scotland, so that has made me more doubtful of that.
• More useful was the earliest known ancestor of my matches, and they are overwhelmingly in Finland, and a few in Ukraine, suggesting my haplogroup migrated from Turkey through the Caucasus area to Finland and then into UK, perhaps Ireland. Perhaps that will be useful one day.

That's as much as I have learned, and it is precious little, though it may perhaps lead me to follow up distant  aDNA matches from Finland (I have one or two). I have tested at FTDNA amd Ancestry, and transferred to Gedmatch, My Heritage and Geni. I'm inclined to think a test with 23andMe would have been a better option for tracing my grandmother's line, though you never know.