My Mothers' Mothers' Mother.

I read a book, the "Seven Daughters of Eve" Bryan Sykes. It's a rather involved book that deals with Human Mitochondrial Genetics...yea...but interesting, none the less. What I took away from the book is we can trace our maternal lineage back to one of seven women, thought of as "clan women". To further muddle this complex theory, some of these clan women are decedents of others, leading to one, one Woman, Eve.
Now in the world of genealogy we tend to follow our surname, in other words, the paternal lineage, to find our "Roots". As a matter of fact, that was my first inclination and was rather easy to do, given that men don't change there name, but I wanted to make it more complicated, I wanted to follow the maternal lineage. See, a male will carry his mother's mtDNA, but he won't pass it on to his children. So my grandson's have my daughter's, but not mine. However, my granddaughters not only have a piece of my daughter (their Mom), but they have a bit of me, and my mother, and her mother, and so on.....so that is why I want to follow all the Mothers of my lineage.

There are no real glimpses of what life was like for the woman in my family, in my research, thus far, but I am seeing bits an pieces that intrigue me...unfortunately I am stuck, I have gone only as far back as my Great, Great, Great gramma, Emeline Shively, who was born in NY in 1830, and ended up in Truckee CA, with her children and no husband.....how did she get from Indiana (where the last 3 of her children were born) to CA? It happened sometime between 1860 and 1870, in the 1860 census her husband was alive and they were in IN, and by the 1870 census, she was in Meadow Lake CA, with her 2 younger children and her married daughters family (My Great, Great Gramma). Did she travel across the country with 2 young children, by herself? to be closer to her daughter, after the loss of her husband? Did her husband make it out there and pass away? or did he die en route? It seems so intriguing...But I want to know who she was, I want to find her maiden name to see where she grew up and under what conditions....and what of her Mother? She would have been born in the early 1800's, where did she come from?.....my search continues.
At some point I'd like to write the story of these women. And I am hoping that it won't take too long. Wish me luck. Here's my Tree, if you want to look; http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/16703919/family