The following is my answer to an individual seeking information on her Guthrie ancestory born just prior to the Revolutionary War. Trying to trace ancestry back through the Revolutionary War period is problematical. It has been suggested that many records of this period were destroyed by the British during the Revolutionary War and that is no doubt true. I think that in addition to the war this was a period of great movement and that records were just not kept. Can't blame everything on the British. The internet has helped us spread the genealogy knowledge that we have around to more folks, but it has been a dissapointment in that very, very little new information has turned up. While some folks are "discovering their ancestry" they are discovering it from information that has been known for several decades. So far as I know no new previously unknown information on the Guthrie's has turned up due to the internet. All my Guthrie data can be documented from old books. In one case I found information from the 1600's that had never been reported, but it was found in a book first published in the 1960's. We're not going to find much additional information from printed records or from public records. These sources have been mined out and the tailings mined several times. Family legends are useless. The only new source of information we have is DNA testing. It's going to be useful when the database gets large enough. Then we'll be able to compare lines of descent and logically figure out which are related and whom the common ancestor has to be. It won't always help fill in the name of a missing generation, but it will help us get past the missing generation. It may not give us the father's name, but maybe the grandfather or gt-grandfather. It'll also tell us who is not our ancestor. An individual to be tested must be a male Guthrie descendant. If you aren't a male Guthrie then you'll have to find one in the line you want tested. Tests cost from $99 to $230. Sounds like a lot, but I've paid many times that for gasoline, programs for the computer, DSL internet, and other researchers. I can email you a price list and invitation to join the Guthrie database. We presently have 8 members in the Guthrie DNA database. We're gaining about one new member a month. Why don't you help us grow faster? Email me directly for more information. Larry lguthrie@brightok.net