52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 26: Legend – Do We Have Native American Ancestry?

This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

There is a story through my maternal grandmother’s line that we have Native American ancestry. The story was told to many of my cousins. It is usually one of the questions I get asked from second and third cousins who find me on the internet. I have not found any paper documents that support this legend. All census and vital records support that our families were white.[1]

DNA test results for my grandmother also supports a European ancestry. Her mtDNA test shows her Haplogroup as U5 and my Haplogroup is U5b1.[2]  Native American Haplogroups are A, B, C, D, and X.[3] Of course this eliminates that the Native American ancestry on her maternal line. There could still be some trace among her other ancestors. However, her atDNA shows ancestry from Europe with a small percentage of Jewish Disapora out of Spain.[4]

FamilyTree DNA
I don’t know how the story started. Her ancestors were all from the south, coming from such states as Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Because the autosomal DNA loses big chunks the further back one goes in the ancestry, it is possible a Native American could be in her ancestry two hundred or more years ago but that DNA was not passed down.[5]

I am taking the Practical Genetic Genealogy course at GRIP (Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh) next month and hope I can learn more about this part of DNA research.


[1] Well, at least back as far as the 1850 census, the earliest census that shows race, though it is very likely that if they appear in earlier census records, they were probably white.
[2] For my grandmother’s Haplogroup results see FamilyTree DNA (https://www.familytreedna.com/my/mtdna-results : accessed 28 Jun 2019), kit no. 173637. For my Haplogroup, see 23andMe (https://you.23andme.com/reports/maternal_haplogroup/ : accessed 28 Jun 2019).
[3] “Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the America,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas : accessed 28 June 2019).
[4] FamilyTree DNA (https://www.familytreedna.com/my/my-origins : accessed 28 June 2019), kit no. 173637.
[5] For more information on how autosomal DNA is passed down, see “Autosomal DNA,” International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki (https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA : accessed 28 June 2019).

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

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