Still Looking for Daughters

 

Discovering a previously-missed daughter in the Ijams line I'm working on this month put another task on my research to-do list. Daughters mean possible connections to my mother-in-law's matriline, and the discovery this month of another daughter for Sarah Ijams and John Jay Jackson means more work ahead.

Sarah Ijams was my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother. As for DNA significance, Sarah was ancestral to my mother-in-law's matriline, which means any of her daughters could have passed along that same mitochondrial DNA signature. In the case of that newly-realized daughter, Rosanna Jackson, her marriage to Walter Mitchell produced at least three possibilities: her daughters Mary, Martha, and Sarah.

Our task this week will be to explore the lines of descent for each of those three daughters, looking particularly at the daughters of the next generation, those girls born to Mary, Martha, or Sarah. Once we find any candidates, we'll proceed with the same process for the next generation, and then the generation following that, looking only at daughters of daughters.

Once we arrive at any remaining daughters in that long line of female-only descent, the next step will be to see whether any connect to the mtDNA matches we have for my husband's own mtDNA test. Remember, though we are restricting our search to daughters of daughters, mothers do pass down their mtDNA signature to their sons, as well—it's just that sons cannot pass that same result to any of their children.

Thus, though we may need to peek at some genealogical clues for Rosanna and Walter Mitchell's sons, that would only be to guide us regarding their sisters—such as married names. Other than that, we'll need to be sure to keep strictly on task exploring those candidates who can pass along Rosanna's matrilineal code.