The Mallow DNA Project was founded in May 2010 and is independent of any other genealogical websites or forums. This project intends to be as expansive as possible and welcomes all variants of the Mallow surname. A worldwide database is desirable, and participation is welcome from all who meet the criteria noted in the following paragraphs. The success of this Project is directly dependent on the number of Mallow's who join it. This project uses DNA testing of the Y-chromosome. Since only males inherit the Y-chromosome from their fathers, the Y-DNA follows the surname, passing from father to son through all subsequent generations, unchanged (except for random minor mutations) for well over 500 years. This testing cannot specifically identify distant ancestors, but can identify those in this project that you are related to and how closely. Further research with newly-discovered relatives may lead to identification of the common ancestor and, in the process, breaking through brick walls. To participate directly in this project, you should be a male Mallow, regardless of your nationality, national origin, or variants in spelling of the surname. However, females, whose birth surname was Mallow, are welcome and encouraged to participate indirectly by having a male Pate relative (father, brother, uncle, cousin) join the project. Females do not have Y-DNA. They neither inherit it from their fathers nor pass it down to their sons. Thus tracing family lines through maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is problematical, since the mtDNA is passed through the generations only from mothers to daughters. The mtDNA does not follow the family surname due to marriages, with female birth names often quickly lost to history. The mtDNA is passed from mothers to sons, but sons do not pass it on to their children. Females with a Mallow bloodline, who have no Mallow male proxy for their family line, are welcome to submit for mtDNA testing, but should be fully aware of its limitations. A match on mtDNA proves only that the females share a common female ancestor, but the time to the most recent common ancestor may range from many hundreds of years to several thousand years. In other words, a female who was a Mallow by birth could determine a kinship through mtDNA to a female who was never a Mallow either by birth or marriage, while the reverse would never be true for a male Mallow through Y-DNA.