European autosomal results with L3e5 haplogroup

[harpssong]

I have been assigned in L3e5 with Living DNA and 23and Me. I have no known African or Caribbean heritage. My maternal line can be traced back to a woman named Rebecca Brown born in Fayetteville, PA in 1779. I have no further history on her. My paper trail for genealogy looks like this for the past 6 generations
Welsh 25
English 21.88
German 19.53
French 12.5
Scottish 14.06
Swedish 0.78
Unknown 6.25 (Rebecca Brown)

A few unexpected items in autosomal reports-- with Living DNA I have 1.5 Kurdish, 2.1 Finnish/W. Russian, 1.6 Basque, 2.6 Iberian, 3.8 Italian 4.7 NwEurope, 1.8 Scandinavian, 2.9 French. The remaining 87% British Isles.
23&me--9.5 Broad NWEurope, 4.3 Scandinavian, 20.7 French/German, 62 British Isles. 1.3 Iberian, .1 Ashkenazi Jewish,2.1 Broadly European.
Ancestry: short & sweet...French 8, German 5, Sct/IRE 49, Eng, Wales, NWE 38.
I submitted each companies raw data to My Heritage and got these results: ~30 Scandinavian, ~56 British Isles. the remaining 14% showed up as 6.6-9 Greek& S. Italian. ~1 Finnish/Russian, and a 5.8-7.5 Near East/Asia Minor
I also sent my LD and 23&me dna reports to FTDA to see how they would sort out. One kit came back 93 British Isles, 2 East Europe, 5 Asia Minor, the other kit had 34 British Isles, 60 West and Central Europe, 6 Asia Minor, and less than 1% N. Africa.
Aside from the mystery heritage of Rebecca Brown, I am curious about the autosomal reports including areas that aren't part of my fairly well documented family history, such as Iberia, Italy, Greece. I imagine this could be tied to the French Canadian heritage, which has been in North America for well over 300 years.
I appreciate that Germanic, Anglo Saxon, French ethnicity is often not accurate. But some of the smaller percentages, are they noise? Ancient? And can the Near East/Asia Minor heritage give me a clue regarding Rebecca Brown or is that grasping straws?

[JoeyP37]

Is Rebecca Brown your female line ancestor? If you are American, this makes this much easier; it is a West-Central African haplogroup that is found in African-Americans. It is quite likely that your female line is recent African in origin, and that the autosomal DNA has disappeared, leaving only the mitochondrial haplogroup as the trace of an African ancestor. Depending on what part of the United States-if you are indeed an American-your female line has lived, this African ancestor could have grandchildren who would have assimilated into the white community and, over the generations, the African autosomal disappeared while the haplogroup remained.

[harpssong]

JoeyP37, thank you for your response. I am an American. I agree, your suggestion seems most likely. Rebecca Brown married William Maple and they lived their married life in Ohio. I have tried to track down descendant/cousins who potentially share the haplogroup but have not been able to do so. I know that several of Rebecca's children can be found in the 1850 Ohio census and are listed as white. But it's anybody's guess whether it was Rebecca, her mother, grandmother, or g grandmother and so on, who came to North America from Africa. I was curious if the Near East autosomal might be a link to this haplogroup, but probably much more likely it is through African ancestry and simply doesn't appear in any autosomal reports.

[Hurricane]

L3e5 is rare among African American. L3e5 can be found in NW Europe due to the Barbary slave trade

For instance, this british person who was assigned L3e5, scored 6% Middle Eastern
https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/mtdna-haplogroup-project-forums/l3-haplogroup-project/14089-l3e5

Here's a study about the presence of L3e5a in Iceland
https://skemman.is/handle/1946/27644

[harpssong]

L3e5 is rare among African American. L3e5 can be found in NW Europe due to the Barbary slave trade

For instance, this british person who was assigned L3e5, scored 6% Middle Eastern
https://forums.familytreedna.com/forum/mtdna-haplogroup-project-forums/l3-haplogroup-project/14089-l3e5

Here's a study about the presence of L3e5a in Iceland
https://skemman.is/handle/1946/27644

Thank you, Hurricane. I will see if I can contact the poster from Familytreedna forum and ask if she has learned anything further. I have since been told by Living DNA customer service "I have spoken to our science team and they have confirmed that we find plenty of people with no African regions in their autosomal results but with more ancient haplogroup lines with African heritage." Well, not very enlightening, but I guess I'm not alone. I also found the article you sight regarding L3e5a in Iceland. Very interesting. I wonder if more research has been done on that.