This just in from Australia!
My second cousin, Ellie who lives there just sent me this email...
Did your Mom tell you that I've had my mitochondrial DNA identified by the
National Geographic Genographic Project? I don't know that much about genetics,
but from what I do understand, the female side of our family have the same
mitochondrial DNA. So, Granny Cairns, her mother Melissa (Cusick) Oviatt, Marge
and my Mom, your Mom, Therese(don't know how to spell her name) and her
daughter, Maggie and me, you and Tracy, your daughter and Tracy's daughters all
have the same mitochondrial DNA because it is passed through the female line. We
all have Haplogroup U (subclade U4), 16356C, 16519C. You can do a google search
on Haplogroup U4 and will probably find that one of the places where there are a
lot of people with U4 is Finland and where our ancestors came from (Northern
Ireland as well, but via Finland.)
I have just read in Wikipedia that most Sami are U5b and U5b1 but a small
number are U4.
Who knew?!
4 comments:
how the world expands when i come visit you. this is fabulous. and off topic a bit- the name, cusick, is not one you hear often. we were very close to a cusick family when i was growing up. hmmmmm!
sherry
I just read the comment re someone knowing a family of Cusicks. I don't know if you know where the Cusicks lived. Apparently when they first came to USA, they were in New York (I think in the mid 1770's) then moved to Michigan in the early 1800s where Melissa was born in 1850. She and John Franklin Oviatt were married in California in 1877 and lived there and in Oregon. They both died in California, Los Angeles, I think. This, as well as the fact that Granny Cairns ancestors arrived in Milford Conn., around 1631, has made me realize that we are related to an awful lot of Americans.
More food for thought.
Ellie
Amazing. What a coincidence! And how exciting!
I'd love to know more about my own dna history.
It's not the same, but I've heard tell that a significant portion of Icelandic female dna is originally Irish, thanks to marauding Vikings. Iceland is my unexplained fascination. Unfortunately it's going the wrong way for me, I'd need to be Icelandic with a fascination for Ireland! :-)
Ciara...yes, when you think about all those "marauding Vikings" in Ireland, you can see why our DNA is forever mixed with the people of Northern Europe. When I was in Morocco alot of the Berber people have blue eyes which connects them to the Roman invaiders. So fascinating!
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