mt-DNA Test - is it useful for missing Gt Grandparents and more.

[Essnell]

Hi . I will try to be as short as possible. 
Wondering if a mt-DNA test might help in finding missing Gt Gt Grandmother and thus Gt Gt grandfather. 

I have nothing concrete past my Gt Grandmother on my mothers maternal ine.

I have already done Ancestry usual test . I am wondering if this can be extended to the mt-DNA.
The test I have is not showing anything positive past my grandmother and this has been an ongoing issue from day one in 1993.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Essnell

[David Nicoll]

Hi, I would say probably not. mt dna will give you the deep ancestry of your maternal line. The most recent common ancestors of mine are a couple of thousand years ago minimum. I have no surnames that I recognise.

You may have done this all already, but I have found it takes time.

How big a tree do you have? For finding shared but unknown ancestors with Autosomal DNA it needs to be as big and wide as possible.

Then it is “simply” a case of building trees around unknown matches. It is time consuming. I find that you get baffling links showing up but if you persist things usually become clear.


Bear in mind that you can get provable links back to the 18th Century. I have some that it looks like the link is beyond that, but it takes time and patience.

And I have a lot of people in my tree! You have obviously been research for a long time, so have the patience thing!

It’s also a bit easier than it was due to the Ancestry feature giving you Maternal and Paternal matches.

Happy to give any pointers, but you may already have done most things. And there are a lot of good suggestions on this forum.

[Biggles50]

Upload Ancestry DNA to My Heritage, ftDNA & Gedmatch if you have not already done so.

It can be a waiting game keeping fingers crossed that a DNA Match sharing an appropriate amount of DNA is presented.

An mtDNA only goes via maternal to maternal, a Son receives his Mothers mtDNA but does not pass it on to his children whereas his Sister does.

I took a yDNA test and my highest match has a probable MRCA six generations ago and there are hundreds of surnames that do not carry the family surname.

[Romilly]

I’ve tested at 23andme; which gives me my maternal Haplogroup, presumably through mtDNA?

Romilly.

[aghadowey]

It’s also a bit easier than it was due to the Ancestry feature giving you Maternal and Paternal matches.

That feature is now only available if you have a current subscription.