Carolyn and Cousins, I will now attempt to share my reasons for involving myself (and wife) in several studies that utilized professional laboratories to analyze our DNA - my Y-DNA (which I passed off to my 3 sons but not my daughter), and my mother's Mitochondrial-DNA (mtDNA)which I have a perfect copy of in my cells but can not pass off to my children! My daughter got her mtDNA from my wife and gave a copy of her mtDNA to her son - our grandson! He will not pass that on! My wife had Foukes. Chaplines, Formans, Swearingens and etc. from present day Jefferson County, WV. We have not been able to go back to the parents of Michael Fouke bn. about 1738. We are unsure as to the country of the Foukes origin. There are a number of Foukes around the country all of whom we believe came from "Old Michael". How to find out if all the Foukes are related to a common Fouke? We talked with Darrin Fouke of Illinois and asked him if he would have his Y-DNA tested and also find a distant cousin in MD(Hagerstown) or in Ohio and check if there is substantial similarity ( exact match or near match[one step off] ). A close match would allow us to feel better about the direction of our combined research goals (belief that all Foukes are likely to have a common ancestor within the last 10 generations or so). After I began to see what the testing might do I decided to do this myself and my wife's mother's mother (a Miller) had a mother who was born of a couple named Carpenter and the wife is unknown to us at this time. We thought that if my wife's mtDNA were to be tested we might see if others in the ever enlarging mtDNA pool match and if so, then we might see if there are common countries of origin of these matches - thus offering us a clue for our research. Likewise my Y-DNA might show a "profile" of my father and his distant fathers who I have found to be Swedes from north Sweden as long back as the first Swedish records. Same with my Grandmother from Sweden but her mtDNA did not go past my father and I can not now get her mtDNA! So, Both my wife and I had done basic genealogical research and had gone as far in the search for fathers father, etc ; and my wife's mothers mother, etc. as we can. So I had my Y-DNA and mtDNA tested and my wife had her mtDNA tested. We chose FamilyTreeDNA to do the work as other people had said they were dependable and helped them to understand the findings when they came back. The fee was $219 for each of us. She would only get her mtDNA whereas I would get my Y-DNA and my mother's mtDNA. However, we were glad we decided to do this which might tell us who -if anyone- matches with us. And these matches are likely to show us where in the world our straight line ancestors (mothers from mothers for perhaps hundreds of generations for my wife Ann; and fathers from fathers for perhaps Hundreds of generations for me!! END OF INSTALLMENT ONE .... more tomorrow where I will attempt to show the findings and some basic analysis Dick Matteson College Park, MD

Dear Dick, and Cousins, Fascinating! as I knew it would be. I look forward to the next installment. Love, Your Cousin, Carolyn