I'm N1b1b. My maternal grandmother from whom I inherited this mtDNA was from Belarus. We are very close to one of the founding Ashkenazi Jewish maternal groups, but have a mutation on chromosome 176g that transitions to 176a amongst most of the Ashkenazi women of this haplogroup (176g is believed to be older than 176a). The N1b1b 176g type appears to have originated in the Middle East. It is a very rare group, but pockets of them are found in Slavic countries and Lithuania. Some are also found in Italy. It's likely that N1b1b 176g spread from Assyria northward toward Russia and westward toward Sicily. I tested with FT DNA and my rather small group of mtDNA matches are mostly from Turkey and Italy.

About a third of my mother's autosomal DNA matches have Jewish surnames. Given the very small Ashkenazi gene pool, their genetic material is likely amplified and in our case probably goes back many generations. My grandparents weren't Jewish, but clearly had Jewish ancestry in the mix somewhere along the line. I believe in our case the N1b1b is a red herring. The autosomal DNA is providing the real clues into our Jewish ancestry. My mother's autosomal DNA indicates 100% European ancestry, suggesting the Jewish part is actually quite small, despite the large proportion of matches.