Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA in your cells’ mitochondria which only comes from your mother; it is abbreviated to mtDNA. It can be used to learn more about your maternal ancestry although it is slow to mutate. The Y chromosome is passed almost intact from father to son, only a tiny portion at one one end recombines with the X chromosome and it mutates more rapidly; so it is extremely useful for tracing paternal ancestry. All the other chromosomes recombine and the science of using them to find relatives and ancestors is fairly young. That is called autosomal DNA testing. The more large segment matches on chromosomes 1-22 that you have with someone, the more closely you are related. Kitty has ten segments in common with her 2nd cousin Dick Larkin and Shipley has seven. With our Skjold/Wold 2nd cousin we share much more DNA. Kitty has 15 large segments and Shipley has 13 while Dad has a whopping 25 segments. Kitty has five segments in common with her double third cousin and Shipley has seven. See my DNA basics page for more information about what this all means.
So many of my family members have tested their DNA that I have created a special category for them all called Our Family Results. I used to list them all here but there are too many now!
Since the Y chromosome is passed almost unchanged from father to son, the tiny mutations on the Y give us a history of the migrations of the human race. These get assigned to haplogroups on the Y tree so the haplogroup you belong to gives you your deep ancestry. We Norwegian Munsons are R1b-L238 (and more, see below)
Dad tested his Y chromosome at Family Tree DNA so we could get his STR values (see my post on that) and break the brick wall at his 4th grandad. Since then we have tested many SNPs as well to get the deep ancestry from his Y haplogroup.
Kitty started this journey at the National Geographic Genographic Project so has her mtDNA at Family Tree DNA as well as her transferred 23andme results.
For deep ancestry we know these haplogroups:
Direct Ancestor Family Haplogroups as shown in Paul Hawthorne’s colorful ancestry chart
Margarette Wittmann H11
Kitty, Shipley, Stasi, Trudi and presumably all our Thannhauser side first cousins are mtDNA H11 or H11a which goes up the Bavarian Catholic side to Margarette Wittman’s grandmother Veronika Engl. Haplogroup H is the most frequent in Europe at about 40% according to the Europedia article on H. The Wikipedia article claims the H11 subclade of H is mainly found in Central Europe. According to http://www.genealogywise.com/group/haplogrouph11 this haplogroup, H11, is 48,000 years old.
Regina Gundelfinger Gugenheimer K1a1b1a
Our German Jewish Thannhauser grandfather‘s maternal mtDNA haplogroup, which goes back to Regina Gundelfinger (1784 -1858) of Regensburg, is now known to be K1a1b1a, a primarily Ashkenazi haplogroup.
Lauritz Andresen Monsen R1b etc
Shipley and Dad, so the MUNSON line, are Y haplogroup R1b1b2a1a according to 23andme which uses an older version of the Y tree, aka (R-M269, L52+). Better to use the ISOGG R Haplogroup chart which classifies him and cousins Dick and George as R1b1a2a1a L11/PF6539/S127, L52/PF6541, L151/PF6542, P310/PF6546/S129, P311/PF6545/S128. Actually the latest proposal is to use the terminal SNP for naming so then it would be called R1b-P312. This goes up the Norwegian side from original immigrant Lauritz Andresen (Monsen) to Lars Monsen to his ancestor Mons Knutson Titland of Hamre parish Hordaland. This farm Titland originally belonged to a Scottish noble and this is a Scottish haplogroup so perhaps?
We just got back results for the Munson Y that we are positive for P312 so now we are R-P312 aka R1b1a2a1a2 via current ISOGG R page. So of course I could not resist getting the P312 SNP pack to see what more I could learn.
The results are in. We are R1b-L238 (Y11662) which might mean we were Swedish before we were Norwegian (shocking!). L238 is the Scandinavian branch of those European invading R1b warriors with their horses and bronze and Y11662 is the Swedish subgroup (includes some Scots and Norwegians of course). See the migration map here: http://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/R1b-migration-map.jpg
read about us R1b folk here: http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1b_Y-DNA.shtml
Cousins Dick and George are listed at 23andme as this same haplogroup even though they are not related to the Munson paternal line in genealogical times! The R1b haplogroup is extremely frequent along the Atlantic and Baltic coasts according to Wikipedia, “The frequency is about 71% in Scotland, 70% in Spain and 60% in France. In south-eastern England the frequency of this clade is about 70%; in parts of the rest of north and western England, Spain, Portugal, Wales and Ireland, it is as high as 90%. (So not surprising that cousin George with French Y-DNA and our 2nd cousin Dick Larkin with colonial English ancestors are also R1b1a2a1a1 aka (R-M269, L52+). According to Europedia which has nice maps, R1b is associated with the indo-european invasion of Europe after the neolithic age. A more in depth advanced discussion of recent R1b research is on the Eurogene Blog
Anna Knutsdatter Wold H5a1
Dad and cousins George and Henry are mtDNA H5a1 which comes to them from Maren Wold Lee’s mother g-grandmother Anna Wold. Sadly this haplogroup is a risk factor for late onset Alzheimers. Anna looks somewhat like a native American so perhaps has Sammi ancestors. Her furthest back known maternal ancestor is Ragnhild Talleivsdtr Selstad circa 1625-1692 Telemark, Norge. This I found from meeting some very helpful Norwegian cousins online who match our autosomal DNA. Other distant relatives had already put her ancestry (the Glaim family) on Geni back to the 1300s.
Josephine Halling T2b
Dick Larkin is mtDNA T2b which comes to him from our original immigrant ancestress Josephine Halling, wife of Lauritz Monsen, who wrote the family lullaby (her uncles were musical too, we think this is where it comes from in all of us). Her furthest back known maternal ancestress as researched by Dick is Joran Neilsdatter Grundeland, 1691 – October 11, 1769, Sør-Audnedal, Vest-Agder, Norway. Wikepedia describes the mtDNA group T quoting ISOGG this way: “”The mitochondrial Haplogroup T is best characterized as a European lineage. With an origin in the Near East greater than 45,000 years ago, the major sub-lineages of Haplogroup T entered Europe around the time of the Neolithic 10,000 years ago. Once in Europe, these sub-lineages underwent a dramatic expansion associated with the arrival of agriculture in Europe. Today, we find Haplogroup T*, the root Haplogroup for Haplogroup T, widely distributed in Europe.”
Jørgen Oleson Wold – I1 1816-1892
Our Wold cousin is the classic Nordic Y haplogroup I1 which comes to him from our g-grandfather Jørgen Oleson Wold. This branch developed in isolation in Scandinavia about 20,000 years ago. According to Europedia, “Men belonging to this haplogroup all descend from a single ancestor who lived between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago.”
Our Skjold 3rd cousin does not share either his straight paternal or maternal ancestry with us but his paternal line is from the same part of Norway as our Skjold family and he is Y haplogroup I1* which is a classic scandinavian Y haplogroup and his mtDNA is H10.
I also got a Steinhardt cousin (directly descended from Isaak Steinhardt of Floss, the g-grandfather of Charlotte Langermann Thannhauser) to test who is Y haplogroup T1. This haplogroup may have been spread by the Phoenicians and comes from the Levant according to http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml#T
Finally, a direct line Kutz descendant from our ancestor Alexander Kutz is J1e, a known Ashkenazi group (also known as J1-P58) and there are numerous subgroups downstream one of which is the Cohanim group which he may or may not belong to. Only further testing will tell.
The new Y tree released this past week by Family Tree DNA has dropped all those horrible long names like R1b1b1a1 and replaced them with the main Y haplogroup followed by the terminal SNP. This had long been suggested as a better nomenclature. The downside is that you have to look at a chart to see how an R-P311 might be related to an R-P312 but it is worth it for the simplification of the name. Although I think we R1b’s are used to being different from the R1a’s and I would prefer that we were R1b-P312
is the best introduction to the use of these tests for genealogy and tracing your roots that I have found.
. Also see 
