mtDNA Results 20080621
Saturday, June 21st, 2008Great excitement here when I saw my result was through this morning, over a month before the predicted date. This is the first completed mtDNA test under the umbrella of the Canton Surname Project (CSP) and I am hoping readers will find it interesting.
The results are now shown on the Project public website
www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject/
and scroll right down to the bottom. You’ll even see my location on a map, in unlabelled Cardiff. I’ll leave my earlier account here for reference and with some commentary:
Kit No.: 121844 / Name: Sheila Rowlands / Haplogroup: H
/ HVR 1 Differences from CRS: 16304C [abbreviated to 304C on the chart.]
Letters of the alphabet are used to label haplogroups for both Y-DNA and mtDNA, but they have no connection or overlap with each other.
CRS stands for Cambridge Reference Sequence, from the earliest mitochondrial tests, used as the basis for comparison in all mtDNA tests.
Haplogroup H is a very common one, making up about 40% of mtDNA in Europe. As with the Y-DNA haplogroups, there are sub-divisions - I can have further tests on my existing sample, for an extra fee. I am very interested in knowing more and am considering doing this - I’ll let you know. By the way, as I write there are already 954 matches for my result in the database so refinement seems wise.
Haplogroup H is the one named ‘Helina’ in Stephen Oppenheimer’s books, e.g., The Origins of the British, (London, 2007, paperback), which I can recommend highly.
My maternal grandmother was Olive Emma Ann Canton born Lamphey 1895; her mother Eliza Ann Charles born Monkton 1863; her mother Ann Griffiths born Monkton 1836; and her mother Ann Williams born St Twynnells 1797. The St Twynnells documentary records are poor and allow me to know only that this last Ann was the daughter of William Williams and that there were two men of this name in the parish. One married Elizabeth Eynon of a Stackpole family and the other married yet another Ann Williams of St Twynnells. Who knows - perhaps my mtDNA test will one day provide the answer!
I am not writing much more about this now, for two reasons, one of which is covered by the personal news below - the other is that it’s all fairly new to me and I don’t know enough to explain it all right now without copying out chunks of other people’s copyright material. Better then if I refer you to some FTDNA pages on mitochondrial DNA tests for now.
http://www.familytreedna.com/tr_mtDNA.pdf
http://www.familytreedna.com/hclade.html
FTDNA site has masses of information. Go to
then click on the SiteMap link at the very bottom of that page.
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PERSONAL NOTE
Some of you know that I have been ill recently - it is a very painful spinal condition which I feared for a long time to be a variation on my long-term Churg-Strauss vasculitis. I have had a good many tests, scans, etc, and yesterday saw my consultant at St Thomas’s. He felt he could now exclude CSS as a cause and said he will recommend I see an orthopaedic surgeon. Any reader who has known me since the 1980s may just remember I had an op on my spine then (though on a different part) - I’m not very keen on the prospect but will be glad to get it all sorted out. I shall carry on as I’ve done recently, writing this blog from time to time. On odd ‘good’ days I’ll be trying hard to move the Canton Surname Project forward. If you have any suggestions, please write to me at the one-name.org address.
[Blog updated on 3 July 2008.]