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.