The mtdna that I received from my mother, who received it from her mother and on back to the beginning lost in the mists, is L3e3b. I have been told that I share this haplo group of L3e3b with the Mende people of Sierra Leone. You can read more in this post Stolen from Africa – Fearless Females.
Annie Williams is the first woman in this ancestral line that I can name. She was born about 1820 in Virginia. Her daughter, Eliza Williams Allen (who is the Eliza this blog is named after) and all of her children were born in Alabama. Eliza passed her mtdna to her 13 children. 5 died before adulthood. 2 were sons. Of her 6 daughters, I wondered, how many had daughters who had daughters, who had daughters?
Mary Allen McCall had 6 children, 2 sons and 3 daughters survived to adulthood. Two, Jeanette McCall McEwen and Alma Otilla McCall Howard, had sons only. Annabell McCall Martin had 7 children. 3 were sons and 3, daughters, Anna Marie Martin, Geneva Martin and Thelma Martin. So far I have been unable to trace them beyond the 1940 census in Detroit when they were unmarried, childless, teenagers, so I don’t know if they had daughters.
Anna Allen (oval picture) had no children.
Below Anna is Beulah Allen Pope who had 2 sons and 1 daughter. Her daughter, Annie Lee Pope Gilmer, had 1 son.
Willie Lee Allen Tulane had 3 daughters. Only 1, Naomi, survived to adulthood. Naomi Tulane Vincent had three daughters – Sylvia, Jacqui and Barbara. Sylvia and Barbara did not have any children. Jacqui had 2 sons.
Abbie Allen Brown had 2 sons.
My great grandmother, Jennie Virginia had three daughters. Daisy and Alice had no children. My grandmother, Fannie, had 4 children. Her 2 sons died in childhood. Her 2 daughters, my aunt Mary V. had 3 daughters. Barbara and Marilyn both had sons only. Dee Dee’s one daughter, Maricea, has no children.
My mother, Doris, had 2 daughters. I (Kristin) have 2 sons and 4 daughters. Jilo has 1 son and 2 daughters. Ife has 1 son and 1 daughter. Ayanna has no children. Tulani has 1 daughter. All of their daughters are still children. My sister Pearl had 1 daughter. Deignan has 1 son and 3 daughters, all still children.
I have the mtdna haplo group from my father’s mother and for my grandfather Cleage’s mother. I will be writing them up soon. I will also be writing about my total dna findings. Unfortunately, there are no men in my direct line alive to test for the Ydna.
I simply love how far back you have been able to go with your mtDNA results! I have my mtDNA results as well, but I have quite a bit of work to do. Great post!
Thanks, Liv. I had never written down who exactly was carrying forward which dna. I hope to be able to trace the Martin girls eventually.
It is amazing how you have a lot of your mtDNA together. I hope that I will be so lucky with my maternal line; tracing back to Mexico
I grew up knowing about Eliza and hearing my mother talk about Eliza’s children. I knew the branches of the family that settled in Detroit, even if I didn’t spend a lot of time with them. As I started researching family history, I have been able to find descendents willing to share from all the branches of this family that still have living members. It has made it much easier to connect the dots. It wasn’t quite the same with the other mtdna branches of my family but I’m working on it.
Good luck with tracing back to Mexico!
I am so interested in this topic. I love the way you approached it and wrote it up. I wonder how many people I could identify with the same mtDNA. Great post.
It’s something to ponder, isn’t it? I thought there would be more because I wasn’t thinking about how many are daughters of sons, who have their mother’s mtdna.
What an interesting post! I don’t know much about DNA testing and this post piqued my interest.
After I wrote it, I started getting interested in all sorts of things I could do – comparing my dna with my cousins, my sister, my children…if I just come into a fortune or can convince more people to test.
Awesome — to think of all those foremothers, waiting to be remembered!
By my count, that makes thirty-six female descendants of Eliza Williams Allen (BTW, is she the Eliza of “Finding Eliza”?). Somehow, knowing this number makes each life feel all the more precious to me–how fragile we all are, yet so wonderfully persistent. We carry that ancestral DNA forward, despite all the odds. So you send your DNA away to be analyzed? Intriguing–the secrets locked up inside it if only we could decode them all. You are doing amazing detective work in unlocking these mysteries in your family. What does this journey do, I wonder, to one’s own evolving sense of self, to knowing oneself?
Yes, this is the Eliza of Finding Eliza. Thanks for asking, I added that up there. I did send it away. I had to spit in a tube and send it back. They give me all sorts of possible relatives but so far none of us can figure out how we are cousins. It is interesting to compare data from known cousins, to see how much dna we share after several generations.
I’m not sure how or if it’s changing my sense of who I am. I haven’t really discovered anything surprising so far. Except for that bit of neanderthal dna.
She does have more female descendants but some of them came through sons and grandsons etc., so they don’t carry her mtdna.
This really interests me Kristin.
Did you do the DNA testing through Ancestry? Ancestry wont send the kit to Australia as it breaches our privacy laws.
There is supposition that we have aboriginal heritage (an unknown father) in my ancestry and I would like to prove it.
Sharon, I tested through 23 & me https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/ They test all over the world and from reading reviews online they have the better test, at this point. If you do it, I’d be interested to see what you find!
Thank you very much Kristin. I have sent an email with a couple of questions before I arrange testing.
You are sure to see a blog when I have completed it 🙂
Thanks again.
I don’t know much about DNA testing, but it is interesting and I think about it now and then. Maybe one of these days. I read the linked Fearless Females post and am so glad I did. Amazing about your daughter’s name. I would have gotten goosebumps seeing her name on the list.
It was an emotional moment for me.