The Interstate and West Indian Exposition

Yesterday's post reminded me to look at what events might have been happening in Charleston, South Carolina when Agnes Atherton was producing her ten week run at the Star Theatre in the Spring of 1902. Between December 1901 and late June 1902, Charleston was host to the Interstate and West Indian Exposition, which was a World's Fair style event to stimulate business and trade through Charleston's port. This would have been similar to the Trans-Mississippi International Exhibition in Omaha, Nebraska in 1898, an event that Agnes definitely performed in.

Charleston, SC. 1902.

Agnes very likely attended the exposition in Charleston, and certainly would have entertained audiences who might also have been in the city for that event. The grounds became Hampton Park and the new campus for The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. A guest registry book of attendees from the exposition is available on The Citadel Archives, including one page with this great doodle of a cadet among the many signatures in April 1902.

Guest registry, Interstate and West Indian Exposition.

Season pass. Citadel Archives.

Tampa, 1902

 

Ideogram. Agnes in Tampa, 1902.

One hundred twenty-three years ago, Agnes Atherton was performing and producing a vaudeville show at the Imperial Theatre in Tampa, Florida. An imagined scene above shows Agnes in Ybor City, a historic neighborhood in Tampa that would have been thriving during her stay.

DNA in the News: Could your ancestry DNA results unlock citizenship?

A timely article from the BBC describing examples of UK residents learning about their heritage through DNA results, and then using that information to see citizenship in their ancestral countries.

Guthrie Genealogy Project

Back in April I shared a few posts on the connection from my Dad's side of the tree to the Guthrie family (see here, here and here). Jesse Guthrie was a 5th-great-grandfather, descending from his daughter Susan Ann Guthrie Smith. In prior posts I had listed her as a Martin in error.

Ann Guthrie manages the excellent Guthrie Genealogy blog, and recently shared some milestones on the Guthrie genealogy project. I've added my Dad's autosomal DNA results to the project on FamilyTreeDNA, and am interested to learn more about DNA finds on this branch of our tree.

Paradise Cove, 2022

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Malibu, 22 Oct 2022.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

 

Campuzano siblings. Tucson.

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from 15 September to 15 October each year. I've shared this photo previously, showing my Granny (standing over a younger sister on the right side of the photo) and her siblings in Tucson, Arizona sometime in the 1930s. A link to last year's post is here.

Update - a link to Ancestry's Hispanic Heritage Month blog entry.

RootsTech 2026

 

Back in June, I submitted a proposal for a 20 minute pre-recorded talk for RootsTech 2026. I knew in mid-May that it was a longshot because I'm supposed to be in India during RootsTech next March and that it might be better for me to target RootsTech 2027 for a session. Earlier in the week I received a formal response to the proposal. It was a nice note, and I'm not sharing all of it above. The organizers receive a lot of proposals and it was a competitive process.

I am still thinking about whether I'll turn the proposed talk into something else, position it for a different genealogy event, or save the topic for a later time.

Big thanks to Sophia who assisted with research over the summer, organizing a timeline and some slides for the potential talk. I still have the source material and some concepts that maybe we'll put to use in another format.

Registration opens for the 2026 conference (both in-person and online) on 24 September at Rootstech.org.

AncestryDNA Update Coming

 

Source: Ancestry Blog, 11 Sep 2025.

Ancestry's annual update to its AncestryDNA origins feature is coming soon, according to yesterday's blog (see link above). Last year's update arrived in October. The 2025 update promises more precise regions and new macro-regions. An expanded reference panel (up to 185,000 samples) will allow for in-country breakdowns, such as specific parts of Ireland. I'm very interested to see what the new update uncovers for my Dad's results.

From the last line of the blog post, it looks like Ancestry will release the update in October again. 

Captain of the Rattle Watch

According to Lorine McGinnis Schulze's book on Lodewyck Post and Agnietje Bonen, and the Mapping Early New York encyclopedia, Lodewyck was appointed as Captain of the Rattle Watch by the burgomasters of New Amsterdam in 1658. This became the first paid police force of the colony. Lodewyck was to oversee eight night watchmen, who would patrol New Amsterdam from dusk to dawn with loud rattles and green glass lanterns.

Made in Ideogram. The rattle watch, 1658.

Post was to receive fifteen stivers per month from every family in New Amsterdam to support the funds for the rattle watch. He appears in several court cases in the Mapping Early New York archives, some of which have not yet been translated from Dutch. A document from December 1658 shows Post being directed by the New Amsterdam burgomasters to collect contributions for the rattle watch.

An order for Lodewyck's oversight of the rattle watch in May 1661 is available, and a portion of the record is available below:

Mapping Early New York, 1661.

Also in May 1661, Post came before the burgomasters to address concerns about fighting at the Blue Dove Tavern (see also house of de Blauwe Duijff).

A case from August 1662 shows Post was a defendant over debt (he appears in many debt cases), and the plaintiff tried to sue for Lodewyck's rattle watch money. The case was declined.

A directive from the burgomasters from January 1662 instructed Lodewyck to tell his men to be less noisy on their patrols and not urinate on the steps of City Hall. He was still captain of the rattle watch through May 1663.

Mapping Early New York

 

New Amsterdam History Center.

The New Amsterdam History Center has an amazing interactive feature called Mapping Early New York, allowing visitors to click on various locations of early Manhattan and see imagined video scenes recreating life in the colony (see the map overlay above on the historic Castello Plan for New Amsterdam). The Castello Plan is the earliest known map of what became New York City.

View of Broadway. New Amsterdam History Center.

This website also includes an extensive encyclopedia with links to records. As an example, see the entry for the ship New Netherland, arriving in 1624. The website is a fantastic resource. A sample search result is below, showing Philippe du Trieux and Lodewyck Post from the encyclopedia records.

Source: Mapping Early New York.

Lodewyck's entry reveals a fascinating story I'll pick up in an upcoming post, on his service as captain of the rattle watch. Philippe's entry includes images of his 1640 land patent on Manhattan (see also here: https://encyclopedia.nahc-mapping.org/lots/originalgrantsandfarmsphilip-de-truy-1640-05-22). It is incredible we still have these documents available today.

Provisional Regulations for the Colonists

 

Source: HathiTrust. Documents relating to New Netherland.

The page above is a transcription and translation from the Documents relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library, translated and edited by A. K. F. van Laer. The original provisional regulations would have been read to the colonists who embarked on the ship Nieuw Nederland on 30 March 1624. Our 10th-great-grandparents Philippe du Trieux, Susanna Du Chesne, their children, and other Walloon immigrants were on that first ship from Amsterdam to settle the New Netherland colony for the Dutch West India Company.

Source: HathiTrust. Original Dutch text, 1624.

The transcription of the original text and letters from the Dutch West India Company provide a fascinating light into the early years of the colony.

I've now joined the Association of Philippe du Trieux Descendants, and am still reading Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World.

Tavern Scene

 

David Teniers the Younger. Tavern Scene. 1658.

A painting of a tavern scene by Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger. This scene and the images below depict experiences that Philippe du Trieux or Lodewyck Post may have enjoyed in Amsterdam or Dutch New Netherland. From Lorine McGinnis Schulze's book on Lodewyck and Agnietje Post, Lodewyck was granted permission to operate as a tavern keeper "to sell wine and beer by the small measure" in February 1656 in New Amsterdam.

Adriaen van Ostade. A Woman with a Beer Jug. 1670s.

Perhaps Agnietje assisted in Lodewyck's tavern, pouring beer and wine for customers in the last days of Dutch New Amsterdam and after 1664, the early days of New York.

One more note - I tried to get Ideogram to generate a scene from a tavern in Dutch New Amsterdam in 1656, but the images did not quite match up as well as paintings from the Dutch and Flemish masters of the day.

Adriaen van Ostade. Three Peasants at an Inn. 1647.

A marriage record, 1640

 

Amsterdam Archives. 11 Nov 1640.

The image above comes from the wonderful Archief Amsterdam website, showing the marriage record between my 10th-great-grandparents Lodewyck Cornelius Post and Agniet Bonen (sometimes spelled Agnietje). Lodewyck and Agniet later made their way to New Amsterdam, and their daughter Lysbeth Post married Jacob Du Trieux in 1674. I'm descended from Lysbeth and Jacob.

In 2016, genealogist and author Lorine McGinnis Schulze of Olive Tree Genealogy published a book on Lodewyck and Agniet, and a copy arrived yesterday as I was returning from LA. The book is short, but contains a lot of great detail from available Dutch records and early New Netherland records. According to Lorine's translation, Lodewyck was a chest maker from Naarden in North Holland, and Agniet was from Meurs (Moers, a German town on the west bank of the Rhine River, across from Duisburg, and not far from southern Holland).

There's more to dive into on the records for Lodewyck and Agniet, and a timely companion to read in parallel with Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World. I am reading this now, updated as a 20th anniversary edition for 2025.

Happy Birthday Los Angeles

It's timely I am in Los Angeles for its official (or unofficial) birthday, 244 years ago on 4 September 1781. I've marked this date on special posts in the past (see 2019, 2017, and 2014). Strangely when I was here two years ago I didn't comment on the date.

Fireworks over LA. LACity.gov from its 2021 post.

Venice Beach, 2023

Photo by Patrick Jones. Venice Beach. 4 Sep 2023.

A photo from two years ago, and now I'm back in LA. A couple of days of meetings in my home away from home and ancestral stomping grounds. Los Angeles is a special place for me and one of my favorite cities.

Research Progress September 2025

Here's a progress check since last month. There's been good movement on the maternal side of the tree, but I'll start my recap from the paternal side.

Paternal side research

1 - Identifying the Irish parents of Bridget, my 3rd-great-grandmother. I'm revisiting the Shared Matches of Matches course on YourDNAGuide. There are still strong hints to County Longford, Ireland. I am hoping to make more discoveries ahead of my meetings in Dublin later in October.

2 - Generation of connection for the Pennsylvania O'Briens. Not much movement since I started testing out a theory using Irish naming conventions.

3 - Identifying potential matches descending from the Thornhill/Westall side of the tree to do a mtDNA test.

4 - McIntosh side of the tree and mtDNA matches.

5 - Finding Jones cousins for YDNA testing. I have identified several potentials to ask to test, and need to take the next step to reach out. There are at least some options on various branches descending from my Jones line in Jefferson County, Tennessee.

6 - Trying tools to isolate matches from Ireland on MyHeritage.

Maternal side research

1 - Identify possible siblings of my 3rd-great-grandfather Gabriel Vasquez.

2 - Working with DNA matches on the Amado side of the tree.

3 - Campuzano mtDNA results! This one is about to have a major breakthrough, as any day now my cousin Catherine's mtDNA kit will be processed at FamilyTreeDNA. This will give us a place on the MitoTree for her, and also a mtDNA haplogroup for my 2nd-great-grandmother Maria Jesus Vasquez, her mother Maria Jesus Suastegui, her mother Ana Maria Orosco, and her mother (my 5th-great-grandmother) Reyes Valdes. Another cousin descending from Vicente Campuzano and Maria Jesus Vasquez, has also agreed to take the mtDNA test. Once we have both sets of results, it will be interesting to see how we can use these mtDNA matches and autosomal matches on FTDNA's FamilyFinder to triangulate for Campuzano-Amado and Vasquez-Suastegui connections.

4 - Identifying the connection with the mystery Guerrero-Leyva matches. I've used the DNAPainter matrix tool on this group of people, and am trying to build out a larger understanding of the connection to these people through a floating tree. I have a feeling these people are connected to the Portillo line, but no breakthroughs yet. 

5 (new) - Resolving descendancy from the wives of John Carter using mtDNA.

Numbers update:

In early May I wrote about numbers of matches across AncestryDNA, MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA. Four months later, here's a look at the numbers:

On FTDNA: My Mom's results show 6813 matches, my Dad's have 7116 matches, and I have 7167. On MyHeritage, my Mom's results have 16,767 matches, my Dad's have 20,965 matches, and I have 19,449. on AncestryDNA, my Mom has 63,450 matches, my Dad has 51,481 and I'm at 79,317. It's really a lot, and shows the challenge in boiling down that many matches to useful DNA connections.

Fort Nieuw Amsterdam

 

Painting from NY400 website.

Made in Ideogram. An imagined Fort Nieuw Amsterdam.

NYC 400

Manhattan, 1660 by L.F. Tantillo.

Last year into 2025 marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of the City of New York. My 10th great-grandfather Philippe Du Trieux and his family were among the first settlers of Dutch New Amsterdam, arriving in 1624.

Over the long weekend I finished Russell Shorto's book Taking Manhattan, about the English takeover of New Amsterdam and the formation of New York. I've ordered a copy of his earlier book, The Island at the Center of the World.

There are records from the New Netherland Institute and probably from the Dutch West India Company archives on the Du Trieux family that I may have overlooked when I last researched the family. Part of the month I'll be looking into these records.