Mitochondrial DNA tends to be a very slow changing DNA locked in the mitochondrial cells of the human body. It can remain the same throughout many generations or it can have mutations - either way it may or may not lead you to interesting information. In the case of myself and my siblings we do not have a lot of matches - primarily because the people that I know I will match have not tested. I know quite a few and judging from the size of the families from which I descend on that line there are a lot of them out there - they just have not tested. The only asset to them testing would be seeing if there were any mutations; they are all modern descendants. I need the earlier lines and a few of them have appeared in the FT DNA testing site. I do know that this mtDNA line of mine was in the Blood of the Isles Database by Bryan Sykes in Agryllshire/Ayrshire Scotland and that members carried it to Ireland with the Planters during the Cromwellian era. From there it traveled to America in 1772 with the Rev William Martin in the six ships that came to this area from Northern Ireland (mostly Antrim). But it also traveled directly down from Ayrshire to the Cumbria area in the 1700s. That is the advantage in being able to look at mtDNA. But the names are very difficult because they change with every generation. I have a lot of family lore on this line both from my maternal grandmother and my mother. Their stories do rather mesh but then they are mother and daughter so one would expect that. But Ellen Taylor herself was a mystery. She had an illegitimate daughter in 1879 and then married Edwin Denner Buller before 1886 (marriage missing) and had seven children (my grandmother was the eldest). Interestingly Edwin Denner Buller lived close to where Ellen Taylor lived in Birmingham - her father was likely the boot and shoe maker my grandmother mentioned. Edwin came back from the Fist Boer War injured in 1882 and it is likely that Ellen Taylor was still in the Workhouse at Aston in 1882 (she was there likely in 1881). The hospital in that area was in the Workhouse. The name though is fairly common Ellen + Taylor but in actual fact only seven in Birmingham in this time frame and I have certificates for them all. A descendant of this line wrote to me a couple of months ago telling me the story of my family (but then it is on the web and easily found plus my tree is in ancestry). I suggested atDNA just to see but have not heard back. But it is interesting that a descendant of this family did contact me. So have I made progress because of mitochondrial DNA - I think so. I have an idea of this line just not enough names yet! But the autosomal matches are a huge number and many of them would carry the same H11 haplogroup as well.
Worked on H11 yesterday and have the 21 new people incorporated into the file (433 members which is a good size for this haplogroup). Today I need to look at my block of people in the "can not be put into a subclade while results are private." They do not always tell me when they have opened the file enough to let me see what I need to see to subclade the results. But on the other hand this study with this number of members still represents less than 5% of the people who have tested H11 at FT DNA. So why do I do it; the H11 Newsletter? It is sort of a bond forming thing that brings people together and I am simply encouraging that bonding and for some people it has given answers. Not publishing it yet though; waiting for Russia to get out of Ukraine. 90% of the members of the study are from the British Isles or Europe (East and Central principally) or Scandinavia. But again the 21 new people have provided new links which is always exciting.
A bit of eye strain today so will take god breaks today.
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