[gilmore]

I just received the results of my mitochondrial DNA test, and am apparently of Scottish descent matrilineally as well.

Both men and women inherit mtDNA from our mothers. It's not used much in genetic genealogy, for two reasons. We are more interested in tracing surnames, which are inherited patrilineally, usually, so Y DNA, which men get from our fathers, is more useful in that project. Also, mtDNA mutates slowly, relative to YDNA, so those whose test results match yours are much more distantly related. In other words, it doesn't tell us so much.

Nonetheless, I tested and am in mt DNA Haplogroup H, as is close to 50% of the population of Europe, especially western Europe.

However, my low resolution matches are four in number. I share the same mtDNA with 2 out of 5,699 people whose ancestry is English, but with 2 out of 2,450 whose ancestry is Scots.

What I find remarkable is that it's been some 200 to 400 years since my ancestors came to the US, for the most part, and people of Scots descent are still marrying each other.

[skauwt]

thats great news
I'm awaiting my ydna 37 and mtdna test results in the following weeks and reading your wee snippet has made me more excited of what news lies ahead
interesting you have a Scots maternal side also especially with as you say the time span since when your ancestors lived

doing my mtdna has made me search the female lines of my family tree a bit more indepth than i used to before has this been the case with you also ?

[Colonel MacNeal]

It is curious. My wife and I discovered that even though we were born thousands of miles away from each other, that our families had once lived within a stones throw of each other in Virginia in the 18th-century.

I haven't been brave enough to get my own DNA tested yet. Sent in Sammy's DNA test earlier this week to try to find out why he is the biggest Westie anyone has ever seen.

Cheers, ColMac

[Zardoz]

I'm gonna have to do that some day.

[St. Amish]

Which service are you using?

[O'Callaghan]

Originally Posted by gilmore

What I find remarkable is that it's been some 200 to 400 years since my ancestors came to the US, for the most part, and people of Scots descent are still marrying each other.

Often communities of a particular ethnicity tend to stick together. I'm not so removed from the old country (Ireland) but my last ancestors born in Ireland lived a few miles apart from eachother in London, and went back to Ireland just to marry in her parish church, which was just across the bay from his parish, before going back to London as a married couple. whether they met in England or in Ireland I suppose we shall never know, but either of them might have married an English person, and didn't.

[O'Callaghan]

Originally Posted by Colonel MacNeal

It is curious. My wife and I discovered that even though we were born thousands of miles away from each other, that our families had once lived within a stones throw of each other in Virginia in the 18th-century.

I haven't been brave enough to get my own DNA tested yet. Sent in Sammy's DNA test earlier this week to try to find out why he is the biggest Westie anyone has ever seen.

Cheers, ColMac

I haven't had mine tested either. We discovered my wife's maiden name on my side of the family tree! No, none of our family are from West Virginia! We may, nevertheless, be distant cousins.

[gilmore]

Originally Posted by St. Amish

Which service are you using?

Family Tree DNA. It has the largest database. I then entered the Y DNA results at www.ysearch.org and the mt DNA results at www.mitosearch.org

[Jack Daw]

My Y-DNA test, with 67 markers, indicated that I am Celt-Iberian. Big surprise. So far, I've matched 12 markers with 6 Skenes/Skeans. The report explained this match as dating back 1,000 years or so before surnames were prominent.

[gilmore]

Originally Posted by skauwt

thats great news
I'm awaiting my ydna 37 and mtdna test results in the following weeks and reading your wee snippet has made me more excited of what news lies ahead
interesting you have a Scots maternal side also especially with as you say the time span since when your ancestors lived

doing my mtdna has made me search the female lines of my family tree a bit more indepth than i used to before has this been the case with you also ?

No, not really. My family has been doing this for a long, long time. In most of our lines we have either hit a brick wall, or have traced it back to Charlemagne and his immediate ancestors, which is as far as one can go, reliably (unless Charlemagne's great grandmother, Bertha, was a Merovignian, as some posit. If so, credible genealogies can be traced back a further 2 or 3 centuries.)

For me DNA testing is the tool of last resort, as opposed to some others, who seem to want to be merely tested and then profit from the decades of hard work that others have done.