As I understand the tests - the mitochondrial test only looks at tags passed from mother to daughter down through the line - or, in other words - it only shows DNA that I inherited from my mother, she from my maternal grandmother, she from my maternal great mother, etc., back through all the women of my mother's line It does not look at DNA inherited by any of those women from their fathers or their mothers' fathers.
In my case, while my maternal grandmother got me interested in family history because she told me repeatedly when I was a child that my great great great grandfather went to "the mountains" and brought back a "squaw" as his wife - this particular test particular test show nothing but European ethic tags. If there was a female ancestor on my mother's line, she did not pass her DNA to a female offspring. If she had a son who was in direct line to my mother, her father's ethnic tags would be passed to him but would not be seen in this test.
It gets complicated. As I was told, my great great great grandfather married a Native woman. Grandma didn't even tell me if it was in her family or in my grandfather's so there I'm stuck already. If anyone know which she meant, let me know.
Assuming she meant her family, we have the following information:
Here are my mother's families going backward in time:
Me -
Mom (Georgiana Beismer O'Dell) -
Grandma (Margaret Eleanor Wormuth Beismer)(Maggie) -
her mother Fanny Hulse married to Thomas James Wormuth(James) -
Fanny's mother (Mary Hendricks(on)) married to James David Hulse -
James Wormuth's mother Eleanor Debeck married to Joseph Wormuth -
Mary Hendricks' mother (Anna McClaring (?)) married to John Hendricks(on) [these are my ggg grandparents] -
James Hulse's mother (Mary Schoonover) married to Samuel Hulse [these are my ggg grandparents] -
Eleanor Debeck's mother (Elizabeth ? possibly Orcutt) married to Samuel Debeck [these are my ggg grandparents] -
Joseph Wormuth's mother (Harriet "Barecolt") married to Peter Wormuth [these are my ggg grandparents].
Everyone has 4 sets of ggg grandparents.
What's your understanding of which of the 4 ggg grandmother's is the person whose ethnicity we're trying to find?
Will continue this as data becomes available.
