Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Matrilineal Line

It’s been awhile since I participated in one of Randy Seaver’s, Genea-Musings, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenges. This week, the mission, if we chose to accept it, is

1) List your matrilineal line - your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how your mitochondrial DNA was passed to you!


2) Tell us if you have had your mitochondrial DNA tested, and if so, which Haplogroup you are in.


3) Post your responses on your own blog post, in Comments to this blog post, or in a Note or status line on Facebook.

My maternal lineage is

1. Me
2. Mom
3. Mary Magdalene Pierce (1890 – 1966)
4. Frances “Fannie” White (abt. 1867 – abt 1916)

I have several surnames for Fannie but to date, the White surname is the only one that I have been able to document.

I had my mother’s mtDNA tested through Ancestry.com. If you read the series of posts that I did on ancestral DNA, you are aware of the problems that I encountered with regard to haplogroup assignment by Ancestry. I retested on myself, doing the full sequence mtDNA test, through Family Tree DNA and am awaiting those results.

Based on 1) a cousin testing through National Geographic and 2) inputting the results from Ancestry into various databases, my haplogroup should come back as L3e1a. There were 5 exact matches in mitosearch but all only tested the HVR1 region. There were no exact matches in the Sorenson database or the Ancestry database.

On my paternal side, the matrilineal line of my father is

1. Iola Everett (1893 – 1969)
2. Edith Ewell (abt 1864 – 1917)
3. Pennie Ewell (abt 1840 – unk)

Dad’s mtDNA testing was done through Family Tree DNA. His maternal Haplogroup is L3e1. There were 5 matches at the high resolution level (HVR1 + HVR2). I’ve only had contact with one of the matches, who I now consider a DNA cousin. However, at this point we were unable to connect our families and due to the veil of slavery, I doubt that we will ever be able to connect the dots.