SNGF: Matrilineal Line

For his weekly Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver at Geneamusings challenged:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:


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.

Perhaps he came up with this idea because tomorrow is Mother's Day?

a) Me - John C. Newmark (1969 - )
b) (classified)
c) Myrtle Van Every (1900-1951) married Martin Joel Deutsch (1907-1991)
d) Margaret Jane McAlpin Monteroy Denyer (1868-1923) married Melvin Elijah Van Every (1863-1929)
e) Sarah Ann Hartley (1836-1898) married Ebenezer Ophan Denyer (1828-1872)
f) Eliza Beasley (?-?) married George W. Hartley (?-?)

The names of Eliza Beasley and George W. Hartley come from the Dawes Commission testimony of Sarah's brother Samuel Tillman Hartley.  And that is where my knowledge ends.

My mother has had her mtDNA tested and she was in Haplogroup U5 (Clan Ursula) - This suggests a possible origin in Northern Europe - such as Sweden, Norway, or Finland.  This discovery didn't disprove that Sarah Hartley was part Choctaw (she allegedly claimed to be 1/8), but it does suggest that her brother's claim in front of the Dawes Commission that their mother was 100% Native American (1/2 Choctaw, 1/2 Cherokee) was inaccurate.