Comparing another DNA tool: LivingDNA

 

Autosomal results for KDJ from LivingDNA, Apr 2025.

In the interest of seeking DNA matches in as many pools as possible, I've uploaded my own AncestryDNA raw data and the file I manage from my Dad's DNA to LivingDNA. This is a UK-based company, so I am hoping any matches that might be generated to our data may help identify connections on our mystery Irish and English lines.

It was free to upload the data, but cost $30 to unlock the country-specific ethnicity results. Once uploaded, the reports were ready in about an hour or so. While I'm more interested in the potential matches, the comparison with other DNA ancestral journeys is also useful (see our 2024 AncestryDNA update). LivingDNA provides more granularity on subregions in Great Britain (not necessarily in Ireland). The percentages for Ireland with LivingDNA (11.3% on my Dad's results), match up fairly well with the 12% for Ireland in the 2024 Ancestry update. MyHeritage was lower at 8.7%. Ancestry also shows more subregions within Ireland.

What I don't know enough about is what reference panel LivingDNA is using to derive these subregions. It looks similar to reports from Gedmatch. I'm curious to see what matches will appear once these are returned in about a week.

Reflections on creativity (article worth reading)

Last month I highlighted an article after RootsTech, and I think this might become a regular feature on the blog to share an "article worth reading". This one is titled The Creativity Hack No One Told You About: Read the Obits by Keith Sawyer (in the MIT Press Reader). This isn't news to family historians, or those of us seeking family connections by researching DNA matches.

This conclusion caught my attention: "In every person's life story, there's always a narrative, always a deeper principle at work...Seek that deeper principle, ask 'why?', and look for distant connections with your own life."

A lovely village

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Castle Combe, UK. 26 Apr 2025.

I'm back from England, catching up. The historic village of Castle Combe looks like it could be the setting for any number of British tv series and movies. Really lovely.

DNA Day

 

LIFE Photo Collection. Fritz Goro. DNA.

Today marks DNA Day, commemorating the day in 1953 when Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin published papers in Nature detailing the structure of DNA. Since April 2003, the 25th has been celebrated along with the completion of work by the Human Genome Project to raise awareness of DNA and the scientific discoveries that have followed.

London's parks

 

Jennie Tuffs. London Transport Art. 1997.

On the lake

 

Photo by A. Jones. Lake Murray, SC. 30 Mar 2025.

A throwback to our early spring visit with family down in South Carolina.

Earth Day

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. USC, 5 June 2009.

Easter by train

 

London Transport Museum. 1931.

The London Transport Museum has a cool collection on Google Arts & Culture. This post is partly a reminder for myself to check it again before future UK travels.

Easter

 

Claude Monet. Spring by the Seine. 1875.

The probate file of Russell Day

 

FamilySearch. 28 Feb 1879.

Fred E. Day's father, Russell Day, died in Detroit on 20 April 1877. His widow, Eliza E. Day, filed a petition for his estate, and named her three children, R. Delaney Day, Brayton C. Day, and Fred E. Day in the record.

By July 1885, Eliza and her two surviving sons Brayton and Fred, sold the family home for $7075. The proceeds from the sale likely helped Fred move to Nashville and restart his music career.

FamilySearch. Wayne County, MI. Deeds.

Signs they briefly lived together

 

Ancestry. Michigan Marriage Records. 1883.

Sometime after the October 1881 Indianapolis marriage of Agnes Atherton and Fred E. Day, the couple returned to the home of Fred's mother, Eliza Day, in Detroit. Either gigs dried up for Fred, or the couple were trying out domestic life in Fred's home city. Fred took a job as a brakeman with the railroad alongside his brother Brayton in Detroit, and appears in the 1883 City Directory living back at his mother's home with Brayton (Agnes does not appear in the record).

Between September and December 1883, Agnes performed at the Opera House in Saginaw, Michigan.

Saginaw Evening Express. 3 Dec 1883.

In the entry at the top of the post, Agnes is recorded with her married name Agnes Day, as a witness along with husband Fred to the marriage of James O'Donoghere and Lizzie Mitchell. This occurred on 27 November 1883 in the Springwells neighborhood of Detroit. James was a fellow railroad employee and immigrant from Ireland. It does not appear there's any connection between James and Agnes, other than Irish heritage.

By January 1884, Agnes was performing with another company in Cincinnati, and then went on an extended tour throughout the Midwest. She did not return to Michigan until August 1884, and she was back on the road again shortly afterward. This seems to mark the end of the relationship, as Fred filed for divorce once he moved to Nashville in 1885.

I think this has given me a fresh perspective on Fred, learning about the full spectrum of his life before and after his marriage to Agnes. They were young, talented performers, and at this part of their lives, Fred was back at home while Agnes' career was taking off on the stage. Perhaps the relationship was the push Fred needed to make the jump to his next phase of life, inspiring him to go to Nashville, and later Chicago and California.

Fred

 

Chicago Chronicle. 7 Feb 1897.

Using the hint on Frederick E. Day in the 1880 US Census in Detroit, and a lot of newspaper sleuthing, I found the story most likely for the young musician who married Agnes Atherton in Indianapolis in 1881, and sought a divorce in Nashville in 1887 so that he could marry again days later. An article in the Chicago Chronicle in February 1897 on the city's noted masters of the double bass violin contains a short paragraph on Fred E. Day, "a first class musician" who had come to the Chicago Opera House after five seasons in Nashville, among other theatres. From the city directories, it looks like he moved from Nashville in 1889, and arrived in Chicago by 1890.

Chicago Chronicle. 7 Feb 1897.

In the 1900 US Census, Fred appears in Chicago, working as a musician, and married of four years to wife Rosa. This census entry shows him born in August 1860 in New York, with Rosa born in May 1872 in Missouri. The Cook County marriage index shows Fred and Rosa Majors were married on 3 December 1896.

Looking back at the 1880 US Census in Detroit, Fred appears living in the household of his mother Eliza E. Day, and older brother Brayton Day. This family appears in the Detroit City Directories in 1877-1879, with Fred listed as a student during those years. There is more on the family's time in Detroit, and I'll have that in another post.

Ancestry. 1880 US Census. Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.

It isn't yet clear to me what happened to Rosa, or Fred's previous wife in Nashville, Clara Boyce Day, but Fred married again in Chicago to Theodosia Hardy on 11 April 1912. By 1914, Fred and Theodosia (listed by her middle name Ada) were living in Los Angeles. The couple appear in the 1920 US Census in Long Beach, California. Fred is listed as a violinist in an orchestra. In the 1930 US Census, they were living in Los Angeles. Fred is listed as a musician in a "picture studio", possibly as part of a film score orchestra.

Fred died on 7 November 1935 in Los Angeles at the age of 75. It does not appear that he and Theodosia had children.

Los Angeles Examiner. 9 Nov 1935.

I dove into Fred's story for the possibility there may be descendants who could have inherited photos, and the long shot chance some record of Agnes' life might have been preserved from his side, even among all Fred's multiple wives.

The Marriage License

 

Marion County Clerk, Indiana. 20 Oct 1881.

Yesterday's mail contained a copy of the marriage license between Agnes Atherton and Fred E. Day, dated 20 October 1881. This was provided by the Marion County Clerk's Office, following my mail-in request for a copy. Last month I posted a copy of the divorce decree, granted in September 1887 by the Davidson County Court in Tennessee. Unfortunately this record doesn't tell us much about Agnes, and contains a number of misspellings of her name (her stage name to be more accurate) by Justice of the Peace, Theodore W. Pease.

Agnes was about 23 at the time, and had been on tour in Michigan and Wisconsin in January-February 1881 prior to her October marriage to Fred in Indianapolis. It isn't clear where Fred had been living prior to the marriage date, but I have some hints he was living in Detroit in 1880. They may have met on tour as Fred was also a musician. In the 1880 Census in Detroit, there is a Frederick E. Day who was 19, with no occupation.

Spring Drizzle

 

Kawai Gyokudō. Spring Drizzle, 1942.

Filter by Journeys now on AncestryDNA

A new feature has landed on AncestryDNA, allowing you to filter by ancestral journeys. I am not sure if this feature only works with Pro Tools or is available to everyone with AncestryDNA matches.

AncestryDNA filters.

This is a great addition to the tools for working with matches on AncestryDNA. Testing this on my Dad's matches for Central Ireland currently returns two pages of connections, some I had already flagged as possible Ireland links.

Notable Connections

 

FTDNA Notable Connections. Apr 2025.

Well this is pretty cool. FTDNA says I have a haplogroup connection with Eva Longoria. We have a shared ancestor in the A2 haplogroup from about 11000 BCE (13000 years ago). I enjoyed her CNN series Searching for Mexico, and she has a new series releasing later this month on 27 April called Searching for Spain (see trailer on YouTube). Given my own Spanish ancestry and potential future travel, I'm interested to see where she goes in the new series.

FTDNA. April 2025.

An outstanding episode

This week's Episode 10 and season finale of Finding Your Roots Season 11, featured actor Laurence Fishburne and host Henry Louis Gates Jr as guests. Although the season started slow, the past three episodes have been really interesting. This episode is classic case study that shows the power of DNA to solve long standing mysteries. Both stories were very powerful, and the weaving of stories between Fishburne learning the identity of his biological father and Gates learning the full story of his 2nd-great-grandmother made for a very compelling, outstanding episode.

It's really cool how a combination of YDNA and autosomal DNA went into tracking down Fishburne's biological father's family. I wonder how long research that took to uncover, as the team also needed to convince another possible connection to test and validate the theories. It was later revealed this key tester was a half-sister, and that Fishburne had two half-siblings, who he met at the end of the episode.

The portion of the episode on Dr. Gates' story was also really cool, and given the investment of his time in shaping Finding Your Roots, it was great to see the show give back to him in uncovering a long standing mystery for his side the family. The fact that he was able to reveal these new discoveries in front of a timely gathering of close and related family made the story even more relevant for them, and added to the episode.

This is a timely, important series and I hope it returns for a 12th season.

Distribution of Jesse's library

 

Ancestry. Posey County, IN. Nov. 1840.

Picking up from yesterday's post, the administrators of the estate of Jesse Guthrie, his widow Priscilla and James Wiggins filed an inventory of the estate with the Posey County Court in February 1824. The records of the Probate Court for Posey County, November 1840 term, includes this inventory. Many of the entries describe books from Jesse's library. Among the works were various Methodist hymns, a copy of Robinson Crusoe, a copy of Paradise Lost, books of grammar and geography, math (including his own book) and history.

Ancestry. Indiana Wills and Probate Records.

Jesse's personal copy of his own book was acquired by Ajax Campbell. Priscilla filed an accounting of the inventory and payouts from the estate to the children and heirs of Jesse (see below):

There's much more on Jesse Guthrie and his family on the extensive Guthrie Genealogy Blog. Other researchers on this Guthrie line should check that space first. While I have more clean-up to do on my own tree on the Guthrie family, I am going to leave this branch for now and return to another side of the tree for my current DNA research questions.

A man of education

 

FamilySearch. Fayette County, KY. 14 Apr 1797.

The indenture above named Thomas Romine as an apprentice to Jesse Guthrie, until Thomas reached the age of 21 years old. Jesse was a well-known teacher in Lexington, Kentucky at the time. The indenture was signed by Levi Todd, grandfather of future First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. Under the terms of apprenticeship, Jesse would teach young Romine how to read, write and use arithmetic and the "rule of three". He would provide Romine with a new suit of clothes, "common wearing apparel" and pay him a wage of 3 pounds 10 shillings.

Jesse Guthrie published a book titled The American Schoolmaster's Assistant (1804; via HathiTrust), which became an early popular textbook for teaching arithmetic. This was one of the first school books published in Kentucky.

Guthrie. 1804.

Lexington Independent Gazetteer. 24 Jan 1804.

The initial publication came with recommendations from the President of Transylvania University in Lexington and several Transylvania professors, along with the Secretary of State of Kentucky, giving some indication of the kind of circles of society that Guthrie worked in during the time.

Indep. Gazetteer. 1804.

In late 1822, Jesse Guthrie and family moved from Harrison County, Kentucky to Posey County, Indiana, a developing trading area on the Ohio River. He died around September 1823 (the administrators of his estate filed papers with the Posey County Court on 15 September 1823). A final settlement of his estate in 1840 included a disposition of his extensive library, which deserves its own post.

Coleman v Mattox, 1824

 

Lexington Weekly Press, 31 Jan 1825.

The notice above was published in the Lexington (Kentucky) Weekly Press between 6 December 1824 and 31 January 1825, as part of a chancery case filed in Harrison County Court on 15 January 1824. The case named Priscilla Guthrie, widow of Jesse Guthrie, and his children Polly (Guthrie) Martin, Priscilla Guthrie, Reuben Guthrie, Rebecca Guthrie, Maryann Guthrie and Suckeyann (Susan Ann) Guthrie. The original action from Harrison County is available online via FamilySearch Labs' Full Text Search.

Jesse Guthrie has been appearing for a while in Ancestry's ThruLines for my Dad's results as a possible 4th-great-grandfather, which would place him as a 5th-great-grandfather to me. There's a quite bit more to sort through. I'm starting with the Coleman v Mattox case and looking at land deeds involving Jesse and Priscilla in Kentucky. Some of the land in the case had been conveyed previously by Jesse and Priscilla to Thomas Morrow on 10 November 1822 (see below):

FamilySearch. Harrison County, KY. 1822.

James Coleman brought his action against Edmond Mattox and the Guthrie survivors as Jesse had at one time held a bond for a conveyance for 130 acres in Harrison County. Jesse, Priscilla and their family moved to Indiana in late 1822 or early 1823, where Jesse died in September 1823. There was a survey error in the acreage of the plot, and Coleman claims the amount of the extra land conveyed to Mattox, Thomas Morrow and others is owed to him.

Coleman v Mattox complaint. 1824.

It looks like a representative of the Guthries answered that they have no further property in Kentucky, and were non-residents of the state. They said if Mattox owed a debt to Guthrie for the extra land the debt should be paid over to Coleman. Priscilla and the heirs of Jesse were dismissed from the case (see the order from the Harrison County Court here on FamilySearch.

In June 1825, the court dismissed an action brought by Priscilla Guthrie against Edmond Mattox.

One more note - there's quite a lot online from other researchers of Jesse and Priscilla Guthrie. More to follow on this interesting branch.

Slow progress

I'm making slow and steady additions to the Irish in La Salle in the 1850s network. Currently I am just adding people to the network who are listed in the 1850 US Census entry for La Salle County several pages on either side of my 3rd-great-grandmother Bridget. I'm not at the stage of analyzing who these people were or where they came from before arriving in Illinois. I have to keep reminding myself this is more like a 10 mile run than a three mile run, and while I don't want to do either, I definitely have to go slow, try not to trip, and take in a bit of the scenery along the way.

Another challenge is that I'm bouncing around on various research questions, not sticking to one topic. There probably are better ways to make the most of the limited research time, but the hope is I'll uncover some gems and surface interesting stories.

A link to the old country

 

Abraham Storck. Izmir, 1645-1710.

One of my current research questions is to work with the DNA matches descending from Jose Jesus Amado and Gertrudis Palomino (my 5th-great-grandparents). They lived in Sonora, Mexico from roughly 1780s (possibly earlier) to the 1820s (possibly later). The Amado surname is believed to be connected with the Amados of Spain and Portugal, and known to be a converso family of Sephardic origin. We have a number of mystery matches who descend from Dionisio Sanchez in early Los Angeles, and his mother was likely a descendant of the Amados in Sonora.

There's another well known Amado family in Los Angeles, with historic ties to the Sephardic community. This family were among the founders of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Los Angeles, and have left a huge legacy to UCLA via the Maurice Amado Foundation. I do not know how or even if our Amados connect into this Amado family. The path of their story, as Sephardic Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from Spain, hints at a very distant link.

Maurice, his brother Raphael, and their families immigrated to the United States from Smyrna (now Izmir, Türkiye) in the Ottoman Empire about 1903. Maurice was involved in the tobacco business and used the fortunes from that business to found and grow the Sephardic community in Los Angeles.

The father of Maurice and Raphael, Solomon Amado, appears to have been born in Izmir about 1845. It would be interesting to see what records are available in Türkiye, and if any of those records tell the story of the family's journey across the Mediterranean. Izmir has been on my list to visit in the future, and now I have even more reason to try to plan a stop.

I need to watch Trees Cry for Rain: A Sephardic Journey (1989) (see also on Vimeo), a documentary film about Rachel Amado Bortnick and her Sephardic roots from Izmir.

Another network example

 

Ancestry Network. April 2025.

Following yesterday's post testing Ancestry's new Networks tool on my Thornhill case, I have started to build out a network based on Irish immigrants in La Salle County, Illinois in the 1850 US Census. My hope is this will identify research leads on the family of my 3rd-great-grandmother Bridget. Last June I looked at Timothy Hanley, a neighbor of Bridget in the 1850 Census entry. Using the Networks tool, I've added him and his brother Thomas Hanley, and am continuing to build out the network with other Irish immigrant neighbors. I suspect several of them will be from Roscommon and Longford in Ireland.

In addition, I created a custom tag "Irish in La Salle Network" on each entry so that anyone who stumbles on these people in my tree will see that I've put them in a network. Networks are still in Beta and not visible to others.

This is still work in progress.

Testing Ancestry's new Networks tool

One of the big features announced at RootsTech last month was Ancestry's Networks. This feature is currently in Beta and available to those with Ancestry's Pro Tools membership. Networks allows you to create a private workspace to collect and organize information on groups of people who may be connected through a particular event, such as military service, passengers on a voyage, a community enumerated in a census record, a religious group or sports team, among others. There are many possible uses for the Networks tool. At RootsTech, some of the examples mentioned were to collect in one space members of the same World War II company and build out their stories, or to follow a group of immigrants from the same ship as they settled in other locations in the United States. Crista Cowan from Ancestry has shared a Tips and Tricks Virtual Event (YouTube) highlighting ways to use the new Networks feature.

For my first test drive with the Networks tool, I've created a network to gather information on all the witnesses and defendants in the 1865 murder of Captain John A. Thornhill of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry. This is a case I've long thought about compiling into a book, and more recently wish it could be made into a limited series for a streaming service. I think this is the perfect example to put the Networks tool to work. There's a large number of people involved, with hundreds of pages of documents scattered across various county court cases, military courts and service records, a Tennessee Supreme Court case and a US Supreme Court case, newspaper articles, witness testimony, census records, diary entries, even a letter from the desk of President Andrew Johnson. There's a real cast of characters involved in this complex story, and I am hoping the Networks tool will help sort them out.

Ancestry Networks example, Apr 2025.

A cool feature is the ability to create Stickie notes. This enables a quick at a glance view of important notes for the Network. A nice addition would be the ability to allow users to drag and drop or reorder the Stickies dynamically on the page.

Example from Ancestry Networks.

Clicking into a Stickie, one can tag or link stickies to people in the network. For example, below is a screen shot from the Rankin v State stickie, and I've added Samuel E. Rankin as a person of interest with this case. Currently Stickies can only be viewed by the network owner, but maybe in the future Ancestry will make these searchable or shareable. The Stickie note feature is really great and I hope that Ancestry enables that for regular users outside of Pro Tools. Within the Stickie note feature, you can use it to create "To Do" lists. My use will definitely evolve as I work more with it.

I've shared some initial feedback to Ancestry through a survey link they have at the top of the networks page. I am hoping they add the ability to create sub-networks within the main network. In my current example, this would allow me to separate the men of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry involved in the case from those who were just part of the regiment, or group the witnesses and family members of Thornhill and separate them from the defendants.

Some other uses that I see for this tool is to use it with groups of DNA mystery matches, potentially in place of a floating tree. I might try to create a Network in LaSalle County, Illinois connecting the Irish immigrants enumerated in the 1850 US Census to find potential links to my 3rd-great-grandmother Bridget.

Murder was the case...

 

FamilySearch. Grainger County, TN. 12 Dec 1865.

This is the companion case to State v Riggs, filed in Grainger County, Tennessee in December 1865, from an earlier action filed in Jefferson County. The screenshot above shows State vs James Berry, which was combined with the Riggs case on appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1866. I'm posting here for later research.

I am currently working with Ancestry's new Networks feature with the John Thornhill case as my first network. This will be the subject of a longer post on Friday, but so far, this is the perfect example of the value of the new Networks. I'll walk through this step by step with how I'm utilizing the tool so far, and where it can be improved with some additions.

State v Berry. Jefferson County, TN. 1865.

Assigning a DNA beneficiary

Ahead of World DNA Day later this month, DNA Study Group has a daily series of challenges to encourage participation. Today's challenge is to assign a DNA beneficiary to the kits one might administer on the various DNA company sites or to communicate with your loved ones on your final wishes for your DNA results. While both are good, the first one, assigning a beneficiary to the DNA results I administer, may be easier.

At RootsTech last month, Ancestry had an Exhibit Hall talk at their booth to walk through the process of assigning a Legacy contact to your Ancestry account. This is fairly easy, and can be found on the Account Settings on Ancestry, then scroll down the page to "Legacy contact", appearing in a box under Region and Language. Once you've added the name and email for the person you want to name as your Legacy contact, Ancestry then sends a confirmation to you like the one below, and presumably an email to the person who has been named as the Legacy contact.

Notification email from Ancestry.

Although I'm hoping to be around for quite some time, I've reached the age where unfortunately friends and colleagues have died too soon. It doesn't hurt to plan ahead and think about who you may want to manage DNA data and those DNA connections after one passes. I want this information preserved so that future generations in the family can build from my own DNA discoveries. New technology and advancements may come along after me which allow us to break through mysteries unimaginable today.

Research Progress April 2025

A new cycle of DNA Study Group starts today with Your DNA Guide. It's been a month since my last DNA research progress post. With the start of the new cycle, I'm updating my research questions. All of these are DNA-related, so it doesn't make sense to break them down by type of course.

1 - Identifying the Irish parents of Bridget, my 3rd-great-grandmother. I am hoping some fresh approaches with Study Group will shake loose new ideas for using DNA to identify mystery matches to her line.

2 - Determining the generation of connection with the Pennsylvania O'Briens. I'm going to try again with the WATO course to see if another attempt makes it easier to work with.

3 - Verify the father of Cora Belle Medcalf using DNA matches.

4 - Identify possible siblings of my 3rd-great-grandfather Gabriel Vasquez, allowing for further research in Chilean records.

5 - Identifying living descendants of Jose Jesus Amado and Gertrudis Palomino (my 5th-great-grandparents), and explore a potential connection to the Amado family of Los Angeles, founders of the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel.

6 - Determining the connection to the cluster of Amado matches on FamilyTreeDNA.

7 - Locating another Jones cousin for YDNA testing.

8 - Working with a Campuzano cousin to potentially take a mtDNA test, giving us a MitoTree haplogroup for some of the maternal branches on the Mexican side of the tree.

9 - Exploring the Campuzano side of the YDNA results to see if we can make a connection back to Spain.

10 - Working forward on the McIntosh line for cousins to encourage to YDNA test. I am going to Scotland in June and will be viewing records on John McIntosh at the University of Edinburgh.

11 - Identifying the connection with the mystery Guerrero-Leyva group of matches. I think the common ancestor is on the Portillo side of the tree.

12 - Working with mtDNA matches and trying to identify connections.

Again, these are DNA questions I'm using for Study Group. I am still pursuing other research, such as:

• Awaiting the copy of the marriage record and certificate for Agnes Atherton O'Brien in Indianapolis from 1881. 
• Awaiting the addition of Sonoran records to FamilySearch Labs' Full Text Search.
• Picking up the trail on the Havens family in Monmouth County, New Jersey.
• Using Ancestry's new Networks tool.
• Planning a possible RootsTech 2026 talk idea.

April

 

Childe Hassam. April: The Green Gown. 1920.