The early settlers of Sudbury, Massachusetts, formed a cohesive community with the same families regularly intermarrying and eventually spreading out in all directions. Many of them came from the southeast of England, but they had not been a community before arriving in the New World. They can be expected to display a cross-section of the English mtDNA. (For an interesting discussion of the English antecedents of Colonial Sudbury, see Powell's Puritan Village.)

Even though the vital records of the early Massachusetts towns were mandated by law and were, on the whole, carefully kept, there are many gaps, as well as lamentable instances where marriages were recorded without the maiden names of the brides, much less the parents' names. Therefore, we see a need for connections that mitochondrial DNA studies can meet -- bridging the gaps left by the vital records.