READ THE BACKGROUND PAGE BEFORE CLICKING JOIN.

This project has two main purposes. It is an archaeogenetic-like study of County Kerry, a region of southern Ireland - the province of Munster. Who knows - maybe we'll learn something about the settlement of County Kerry. But the project is also here to try lending a hand to those doing genealogical research on their County Kerry born direct maternal line ancestors. So whether you are a history buff or trying to figure out where your great-grandmother was from, hopefully there is something here for you.

With very active participation over time, maybe we'll be able to identify clusters of specific haplogroups that have a notable presence in Kerry, and help members narrow down the likely origins of their ancestors.

Problems with record dating exist for some County Kerry Roman Catholic records, complicating genealogy research in the area.

Female ancestors can be particularly difficult to research in part because of the historical traditions of name changes upon marriage and probable relocation to the husband's home, at perhaps a considerable distance from other relatives.

Southern Ireland especially has its research problems in that nicknames, secondary names and agnomina may have been substituted for formal surnames in genealogical records.

• The first of our two main goals is to collect and present County Kerry mitochondrial haplogroup data in conjunction with known high quality matriline genealogical data as an aid to all researchers who are struggling at various levels with their direct matriline research in Ireland. This requires members' communal willingness to actively work on their genealogies and engage with the project instead of having their results just sit passively in a table in a FTDNA database.

• The second of our two main goals is to help project members push their matriline research further back in County Kerry.

• Mitochondrial DNA in particular is the poor neglected ugly stepchild of genetic DNA testing. Our secondary goal is to further motivate those of us participating in this study to improve our knowledge of mitochondrial DNA and what we can glean from our results.

The study will work towards the following objectives to achieve these goals:

• Group known County Kerry matriline results by haplogroup.

• Identify haplogroup clusters found in County Kerry. And celebrate when we find them!

• Contribute to the "crowd sourced" population of the FTDNA mtDNA haplotree with our DNA and geographic origin data.

• Publish on the private member-only pages slightly more detailed analysis of true Genetic Distance when sufficient data warrants.

• Publish a map with haplogroups / ancestral data pinned on specific locations when sufficient data warrants.

• Provide a means by which members can optionally have published their direct matriline pedigrees on our Results page.

• Direct members to other relevant forums/groups for assistance reading genealogical records. Or, provide assistance via the Activity Feed.

• Identify and examine any scientific literature relevant to our mitochondrial DNA.

There is NO assurance that we will achieve these goals.