Why does my maternal haplo group differ from the one mentioned on my matrilineal ancestor?

Question

Please be patient with me because this is likely a dumb question. 

My maternal haplogroup (from 23andMe) is W3a. My matrilineal branch is french Canadian with an early Canadian ancestor being Anne Chevalier. [[Chevalier-166|Anne Chevalier (abt.1629-1705)]] . When researching W3a I had read that Anne Chevalier was a key early ancestor in Canada for the W3a line. And sure enough, that is who I can trace my maternal tree to. I believe I am her matrilineal descendant. When I go to Anne's Wiki profile I see that there is one Wiki member mentioned as having taken a mtDNA test (at FTDNA) and his haplogroup is not even close to W3a; it's U4c2a. 

Clearly I don't understand the intricacies of mtDNA, and I DO understand that the haplogroup testing by 23andMe is much higher level, so much less detailed, but why would this Wiki member have a completely different haplogroup from me and from what I had read was Anne Chevalier's haplogroup? 

Comments

Not a dumb question!   Please add your mTDNA haplogroup to your profile.   Thanks for posting.

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In addition to adding your mtDNA test to your profile (which you can do here: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:DNATests&u=20965909 ), it would also be great if your matrilineal line could be built out further here on Wikitree - it currently stops at Adeline Annie (Racicot) Poirier (1873-1912). It sounds like you've already worked out the line back to Anne Chevalier elsewhere, you probably don't have far to go to connect back to Wikitree profiles that already exist.

This may help other folks sort out where the one parent-child relationship in the other line is not correct (at least genetically).

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Thank you. And I am in the process of building out my tree on Wikitree, but I am very slow! I still don't feel comfortable adding profiles and sources and keep hitting stumbling blocks (naming conventions; place names; duplicate profiles, etc.) and have to ask questions before proceding. But I am motivated to keep going. ;)

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I've finished connecting my family tree profiles to Anne Chevalier. And, I see that I am now listed on Anne's profile page (Chevalier-166). W3a is a fairly rare haplogroup (as far as I understand it) and so I wasn't surprised at my connection but I wanted to ensure the basis was solid.

Answer 1

The straightforward explanation is that Wikitreer's line of descent to Anne is wrong. I'm guessing an ancestor was attributed to a stepmother instead of the correct mother and here we are.

MtDNA mutates, but W3a will not magically mutate into U4c2a.

Answer 2

I'm confused by the best answer. Nancy states that the person with the different mtDNA group is a male. That would be from his mother. If his father is the descendant of her maternal line than his mtDNA would not be the same as hers. Is this correct?

Comments

If the man’s mother was a direct-line  female descendant of Anne, then he would share her MtDNA Haplogroup.  He cannot pass it on since only women pass MtDNA, but they pass it to all of their children regardless of sex.

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Perfect explanation. Thanks Kathie for answering Lynne's question so well.

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Thank you.