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In honor of mother’s day, I’m reposting a portion of an entry from March 16, 2009 (“Visualizing Your Genetic Genealogy“).  It also follows a SNGF from Randy at Genea-Musings called “Matrilineal Line.”

In my genealogical research, I have sometimes found myself missing the trees by focusing on the forest.  I think it happens to many genealogists – we get caught up in the research, the dates, the places, and we forget that there was so much more to people than their vital statistics.

This can happen to genetic genealogists as well.  The connection between the results of a DNA test and the individuals in our tree can be easy to forget and difficult to visualize.  Take the results of an mtDNA test, for example.  The results are obtained from a tiny piece of DNA that has traveled thousands of years (and often thousands of miles) through hundreds of individuals to end up in your cheek cells and on the tip of a swab.  Everyone’s mtDNA is the product of an amazingly rich story that has largely been lost to history.

However, we as genealogists can do our part to connect the DNA to as much of the story as possible and prevent further loss.  In your own recent past, who were the people that contributed your mtDNA, your Y-DNA, or your autosomal DNA?

Visualizing My mtDNA Line

This is a compilation of the five most recent generations of my mtDNA line over the past 125 years, as shown in photographs:

Cora’s mother was Sarah L. Bodden, born January 1846.  Sarah’s mother was Julia Ann Rebecca, of which very little information is known.  What I do know, however, is that my mtDNA Hapl0group is A2, meaning that my matrilineal line is Native American.  Thus, Julia Ann Rebecca’s mother, grandmother, or more distant maternal ancestor was Native American, most likely of Central American or Caribbean origin.

Happy Mother’s Day to all my maternal ancestors.