My deep matrilineage

Well, ye socks, modern genetics has finally accomplished what many years of genealogical sleuthing on my part have been unable to do: trace my mom's side of the family to the other side of the pond.

Until today, my earliest known maternal ancestress was an Irish immigrant named Elizabeth Gallagher who lived in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1840s and 50s.

Unfortunately, there is a tremendous dearth of available documents on 19th Century Irish ancestors . . . oh, who's kidding who . . . there's a dearth of documents on Irish ancestors of any century.

But, now my friends at www.smgf.org tell me that Elizabeth Gallagher and all her matrilineal descendants (yours truly included) belong to the haplogroup H, a great big clan that traces back some 20,000 years to the Dordogne River valley in southern France. (The people who painted all those bison on cave walls, etc.)

That's kinduva big leap from 19th century Brooklyn, no?