By: Katy Rowe-Schurwanz

Get resources for further learning, tools and expert tips for setting genealogy goals, preparing for your test results, and maximizing tools to uncover your maternal ancestry.

Editor’s Note: This is part five of a five-part series about what mtDNA is, what mtDNA can tell you, and how to apply mtDNA results to your genealogy. Continue reading the series here:

Tips for beginners

Create goals for testing

Before embarking on your genetic genealogy journey, it’s good to have some goals in mind for what you want to find out from DNA testing.

You could be looking for a mystery ancestor, trying to prove a connection between two or more individuals, trying to find out where your maternal ancestors were from, or if they were Native American or Jewish.

You might have one goal or you might have many.

Determine who to test to reach your goals

Knowing what your goal is will help make sure you get the right test for the right person—if your goal is to break a brick wall on your paternal grandmother’s direct maternal line, getting an mtDNA test for yourself isn’t going to do that. You’ll need one for your father or a paternal aunt or uncle instead.

How to set your account up for success

While waiting for your results to come back, there are some steps you can take to set your account up for success.

  1. Make sure your contact information is up to date. Your name and email address will display to your matches as provided in the Contact Information section of your Account Settings. Make sure your name is entered how you’d like it to appear and that the email address is up to date so that you don’t miss any communication from your matches when your results come back.
  2. Fill out the Genealogy section of your Account Settings. There are two sections here: Ancestral Surnames and Earliest Known Ancestors.
    1. While ancestral surnames are often more helpful for autosomal DNA, they can also be helpful for Y-DNA and mtDNA. You may not be able to figure out your mtDNA connection based on just the match name or their earliest known direct maternal ancestor name, but you may find a name in their Ancestral Surnames that’s on their direct maternal line that helps you make the connection.
    2. The Earliest Known Ancestors section is the most important to fill out. Since mtDNA is passed down through mothers, entering the name and location of the mother as far back as you can trace matrilineally will help you and your matches connect to each other. The location is also required for you to display to matches on the Matches Map. If you don’t know any matrilineal ancestors, be sure to check the box next to “I don’t know this information.”
  3. Create a family tree or upload a GEDCOM file through MyHeritage. Family trees put the genealogy in genetic genealogy. Without one, you just have a list of people you share DNA with and no way to determine how.
  4. Look for and join any relevant FamilyTreeDNA Group Projects. Group Projects bring together people working towards a common research goal and may be the connection that allows you to break a brick wall or confirm an ancestral location.

Where to start when your results are in

Where you start when your results are ready will of course depend on your goals for testing.

If your goal is to determine the migration path your ancestors took across and out of Africa, where your ancestors were from, or if your matrilineal ancestors were Native American or Jewish, you’ll want to start with the Migration Map and the Mito Discover reports. The Matches Map, Ancestral Origins report, and Haplogroup Origins report may be helpful places to start as well.

If your goal is to confirm if two or more testers share a common matrilineal ancestor, you’ll want to make sure that results are back for all testers and look at the Matches pages to determine if they are a match or not.

If your goal is to break a brick wall, discover more ancestors, and expand your family tree, you’ll want to start with your mtDNA matches. Start with the matches that share the most mtDNA with you and expand from there. Look at the Earliest Known Direct Maternal Ancestors your matches have provided, the family trees they have shared, and use tools like the Matches Map, Mito Discover Time Tree, and Group Projects to wring every drop out of each match.

Tips for everyone

Be proactive

No genealogy tool—including DNA testing—is like waving a magic wand to get all the answers. With any type of DNA testing, you may be waiting for the right person (the magic person) to test and match. You may need to recruit them yourself. Or that magic person might be on your match list, but you might not recognize them.

If you’re researching a direct maternal line in your tree that isn’t your own, you’ll need to determine the right family member to test. It might be as simple as testing your dad for his direct maternal line, or if it’s further up in your family tree, you may need to build the tree out through daughters to find a cousin to test. So if you want your paternal grandfather’s direct maternal line, look at his mother. Find any daughters she had and daughters they had and so on. If she didn’t have daughters, look at her mother and find what daughters she had and what daughters they had and so on.

Another good recruitment strategy is to look for haplogroup matches in the autosomal databases of companies that provide an mtDNA haplogroup—23andMe, and, soon, FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder. If you have a haplogroup match with one of those tests (or a match who shares the same root as you, since this will be a partial haplogroup), reach out to them and see if they’ll get the mtFull Sequence from FamilyTreeDNA.

Keep trying multiple tools

Keep trying different tools—DNA testing is just one of them. If you can’t find the record you’re looking for at one courthouse or library, you don’t give up, you look at a different courthouse or library instead. Collaborate with Group Projects and use DNA testing in conjunction with all of the traditional genealogy research tools.

Set new goals

Once you do reach the original goals you set before you tested, you’ll probably come up with more questions you want to answer. That means it’s time to set new goals. Your new goals may be to further expand your family tree and ancestral origins for the same line or maybe for a different line.

Be patient

And of course, the most important tip is patience—you may not have that magic match when you get your results, the one that breaks your brick wall and has all the ancestors going back many generations further. You might not figure it all out immediately with the release of the Mitotree and Mito Discover.

You may have to use multiple tools, be proactive, and wait for the results to pay off. But with the mtFull Sequence test, you’ll be prepared for when that magic match shows up—even if the answers aren’t there immediately, you’ve got your fishing pole in the mtDNA pond, ready and waiting for that bite.

mtDNA Resources for further learning and support

Blogs

Books

Courses and Guides

Videos

Facebook Groups

Real-Life Success Stories Using mtDNA for Genealogy

Headshot of Katy Rowe-Schurwanz - Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA

About the Author

Katy Rowe-Schurwanz

Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA

Katy Rowe-Schurwanz has always been interested in genealogy, inspired by her maternal grandparents, who told her stories about their family and family history when she was little. After studying anthropology and history in college, she joined FamilyTreeDNA in 2015 and became the Trainer for Customer Support. Katy created and improved training processes and was fundamental in the creation of the Big Y Specialist team. In September 2021, she became Product Manager and has focused closely on improving FamilyTreeDNA’s genetic genealogy products.