Welcome to the "H3af and Subclades" mtDNA project! Thanks to cultural naming norms, tracing our maternal lines can be difficult, particularly the further back we go. Autosomal DNA can be useful for up to six generations back, but gets too dispersed to see much further. That leaves us mtDNA as a possible thread to trace back. The downside is that our haplogroup expands back thousands of years, further than the historical record or even the common use of surnames. Let’s see what we can discover about our H3af. I’ll admit to being new to mtDNA, so I’ll be discovering along with you. Initially, the only restriction I’ll require is that your kit be H3af or a subclade. We may add additional rules / requests as time goes on. When signing up, please provide information on your maternal line starting as far back as you feel comfortable (for privacy’s sake) and going as far back as you can. We’ll create an updated file with this information and with any luck, someone might see a matching name in their own maternal history. As an example, my maternal line reads as the following: Rita Bernadette HOBBS (b.1915, d.1994) <- Emma Florence HOBBS (b.1876, d.1959) <- Candace Clara Weddle(b.~1842,d.?) <- Henrietta Hammersley (b.1803, d.1878) Also, FTDNA allows for the import or creation of a family tree. Please ensure that you’ve added a family tree to your account that goes as far back along your maternal line as you can. Some useful H3af information: https://haplogroup.org/mtdna/rsrs/l123456/l23456/l2346/l346/l34/l3/n/r/r0/hv/h/h3/h3af/