Mitochondrial DNA and finding a cousin

Serendipity has struck and we have found a cousin.... It helps that due to some time-lags, they are the same generation as my late grandmother (who was born 1905), though considerably younger. Thus there are fewer generations to leap back to the MRCA (most recent common ancestor). This is not important genetically, but just simply in terms of getting the story across. The mutual forebear is Hannah Doxey (b. 1750), entirely in the female line, and thanks to three coincidences, this was also the name of our cousin's grandmother, so not such an alien name as it might have been. In fact, not alien at all!

There are three reasons how this serendiptous naming has happened:
Reason 1) Hannah's daughter married back into the Doxey name, having married a first cousin.
Reason 2) Our cousin was illegitimate, and thus brought up by grandparents, which brings the older folk to the fore, baby Hannah being given the name of her grandmother's mother.
Reason 3) The aforementioned time lags which reduce the number of generations we need to get from 1750 to now.

We look forward to the testing results in due course, and to learning more about Hannah Doxey and her family. (She was evicted from her childhood home, Wirksworth, Derbyshire, in 1786, and this resulted in three deaths in the family that year. We will contend that the eldest daughter then 12, eloped, ran away, five years later. Which DNA will prove.)

#TheGirlFromWirksworth