I do have pale skin and red hair, and my maiden name is Riley. Sounds pretty Irish right? The only thing is that my Rileys came to America from Ireland during Colonial times, and so I suspected that much of the real “Irish” in me had been watered down through the generations.
Miles O’Reilley, my 8th great grandfather, came from Ireland to Virginia with his brothers in about 1635. He eventually made his way to Maryland, where the next few generations of Rileys made their home. From there my Rileys traveled to North Carolina, then Kentucky, and eventually to Ohio, where my Riley grandfather was born. Of course there are some other Irish folks in my family tree, but many of them appear to be of English/Scotch origin. Have you ever noticed that the distance from Ireland to Scotland is less than 20 miles? Maybe the two groups aren’t really that different genetically, especially when you consider that in the past travel by water was much easier than travel by land.
One of the features of the genetic testing lets you know your mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. Haplogroups are determined by infrequent genetic mutations found by Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA testing. You receive your mitochondrial DNA only from your mother and if you are a female you pass it on to your children. So, basically it passes from mother to child and stays intact with mutations only happening occasionally over long periods of time. This is only one part of your DNA makeup of course, but it comes to you with very little changes through your direct female line, whereas the rest of your DNA material is a recombination of your parents' DNA. My maternal haplogroup is H6a1b. H is the subgroup I belong to and the other numbers and letters indicate my place on the subsequent branch of the H subgroup tree. Haplogroup H is the most common in Europe and H6 is one of the oldest offshoots of haplogroup H. H6 traces back to present day Turkey and Syria (about 30,000 years ago). About 3,000 years ago the H6a branch migrated into Europe. Yes, now we are talking about some really ancient ancestors on that direct maternal line. The farthest I’ve been able to trace back on my direct maternal line is to a woman named Mary Harris who was born around 1771 in Virginia. If my research is correct, and there aren’t any genealogical surprises in my tree, then my H6a1b mitochondrial DNA came from this woman, who passed it on to her daughter and granddaughter, and so forth (mother to daughter) -- and eventually to me.
Men, because they have a Y chromosome, can also find out their paternal haplogroup, which similarly is passed down only through the male line, father to son. So, of course I was unable to find out the Riley paternal haplogroup, which, if my family history is correct, should be the same for my father (and brothers) --- as our immigrant Irish ancestor, the above mentioned, Miles O’Reilley. Genetic genealogists and family history associations, to sort out different branches of families with the same surname, often use this paternal haplogroup information.
There is still a lot I have to learn about genetics, but I wish you all a happy St. Patrick’s Day, whatever your family history might be. It seems pretty certain that all of our ancestors came out of Africa, and that if you go back far enough, we are all related.
I am grateful and in awe to be a tiny part of this precious human family called mankind!
-Mary
Miles O’Reilly > Hugh Riley > Eliphaz Riley > Ninian Riley > John Riley > Zachariah Riley > John Riley > Minor Riley > John Riley (my grandfather)
Riley Family Gathering in Troy, OH in the early 1920's.
Seated at the center are my GG grandparents John W. Riley and Caroline Mayo Riley.
5th from the right on the standing last row is my G grandfather Minor Riley
