My mother was very proud of her paternal German ancestors who came to America in 1836 and settled near Osage County, Missouri. Before her passing, she gifted each of her children with overflowing notebooks of her genealogical research – the history of our ancestors. But, as all genealogists know, there’s always more to be learned and always another ancestor to uncover. I like to think I picked up where Mom left off and I have made new discoveries. So I can’t help but wonder what she would have thought about her maternal German ancestors who arrived more than 100 years earlier than her paternal German ancestors.

Back in July, I described my ongoing efforts to prove that my 3rd great grandmother, Sarah Ann (Roberts) Joyce was the daughter of Susanna Thomas and granddaughter of Michael Thomas. I’ve been fortunate to have made contact with a Thomas family researcher (i.e., a Thomas expert) who has examined my family tree and my DNA matches like a pathologist. No, seriously. Within a couple of days, she’d gone through all of my Thomas shared DNA matches and rated the quality of their family trees and quality of the DNA match. Since the Thomases, Joyces and Roberts of Rockingham County, North Carolina intermarried quite frequently, she was especially delighted to find DNA matches who did not also descend from Joyces and Roberts, just Thomases. Not to mention, matches who descended from earlier generations of Thomases from Culpeper County, Virginia. Having reviewed all of the paper trail… the marriage bonded by James Roberts, the proximity of Sarah’s family to the Thomases, the missing daughters of James Roberts in the 1830 census, etc … and a few clusters of important triangulated DNA matches, she concluded that Sarah (Roberts) Joyce HAD TO be the daughter of Susanna Thomas . As she put it, “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”

I didn’t need convincing.

But there’s more to this story. My mitochondrial DNA path travels back through time to Sarah Ann, her mother, her maternal grandmother, etc. H49a1 is my haplogroup. I know this combination of letters and numbers better than some of my passwords. A few weeks ago, I decided to revisit my mtDNA matches and FamilyTreeDNA to see if there was any more I could learn.

And that’s when I made a connection that has turned my research upside down. THREE of my mtDNA matches descend from a woman named Anna Elisabeth Albrecht. This name had no meaning to me at first. It was clearly German-ish. H49a1 originated in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Sweden, if memory serves, so finding the name “Albrecht” was not a surprise. But then I remembered that the “Thomas” surname also originated in Germany as “Thoma”. And that Michael Thomas’ ancestors were part of the 2nd Germanna colonists who came to Virginia in 1717. Another distant cousin had given me a link to a website dedicated to the Germanna colonists; so I hopped over to the website and found the page listing all of the known colonists, when they arrived, etc.

And that’s about the time my heart stopped. There, listed among the settlers of the 2nd colony, where Michael Thomas’s grandparents Johannes Thoma and Anna Maria Blanckenbuhler AND Christoff Zimmerman and his wife, Anna Elisabeth Albrecht – the direct maternal ancestor of three of my mtDNA matches.

DNA doesn’t lie. My Sarah Ann (Roberts) Joyce and Anna Albrecht share a common female ancestor. It’s possible that Anna WAS that female ancestor of Sarah Ann’s, possibly her great grandmother. It’s also possible that she’s a great aunt, or a maternal cousin, etc. Or the relationship MIGHT go back 20 or more generations. Who knows?

But, one thing is for certain, I am going to be spending a lot more time focusing on the Germanna settlers!

Kenfolk: Utlauts
Relationship: 3rd great grandmother
Common ancestors: Isn’t it clear?