My family is from Florida and Georgia on my mother's side of the family and seems to have been moving south for many generations, slowly moving down to the Tampa area where we live today. Most of my relatives are Irish or English as far as we and they, knew.
My grandmothers mother and father were from White Springs, Hamilton county Florida and I have census's back to 1910 showing them living in the area. The 1890 Florida census was lost in a fire, so I have one piece of the trail missing. I'm looking for a marriage record now and hopefully that will list her mother and father.
There has always been a strong history of Native American ancestry on my maternal grandmothers side of the family. My great grandmother was named Sarah Missouri Bryant she married a man named Walter Lee Brady. Supposedly it was her mother that was Cherokee.
I know, I know.. everyone has Cherokee in them in the south right? But I actually have an Uncle and Aunt's that look rather Native. Dark hair and complexion etc. So I have been looking for this mystery Indian and of course my maternal Great Grandmother is my dead end. This mystery has always fascinated me and we have many stories in the family on my grandmothers past, there has always been lots of missing information.
Sarah Missouri Bryant below:
A year or two ago I took a DNA test at http://www.familytreedna.com/. They were having a sale and I was taking a test to join the Allen DNA project at FTDNA. I knew I was an Allen from family and confirmed this with my first test at Ancestry.com as well as a test at SMGF.org I matched many Allen's and all was going well with my Y branch of the family. But the test was a dual Y-Chromosome / mtDNA test.
I was secretly more excited to see if it was true that my grandmother was Indian. Now there are 5 "Indian" mtDNA haplogroups A, B,C, D and X. When I received my results I was a U4... U4 is a very Northern European haplogroup. What this was telling me was that my grandmothers direct female line came from Northern Europe. My closest match's in the database at FTDNA database percentage wise are in Austria. I was bummed. So where is the native ancestry? It could be any males in her line, or her father's mother. mtDNA is only one direct line of your tree and there are many other branches this could be on.
I've also taken a new DNA test at familytreedna.com called "Family Finder".
This is essentially a SNP scan, and it basically scans your entire genome. This test will automatically search the database for people who are related to you and give you the option of attempting to contact them so you can compare pedigrees.
I'm hoping this test will be able to break down my Grandmothers dead ends and add to my genetic info about myself. This is the biggest test I have ever taken and will give me data to mess around with for a few a while.
Ill also get access to my X chromosome it seems.
Men get one X from their mom and one Y from their father. So the X is all mom. She gets this from her mom and dad so I will have segments from my Grandmothers family to explore the Native ancestry if this elusive ancestry exists.
