The Patriot’s Son: How a Tombstone Changed an Ancestor’s Birth Year

Some genealogy discoveries happen in archives. Others happen in courthouses. And occasionally, they happen because a tombstone has weathered just enough for a hidden detail to become visible.

This is the story of how a ten-year search ended with a surprise that changed what I thought I knew about my fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Duer.

Last week, I shared my visit to the grave of my Revolutionary War patriot ancestor, John Duer, in Mahoning County, Ohio. While standing beside his restored monument, I reflected on the journey that brought him from colonial New Jersey to the Ohio frontier.

What I did not realize at the time was that another member of the family was about to provide an even more important clue.

Thomas Duer, John’s son, died in Trumbull County, Ohio, in 1829. Proving the relationship between father and son was not straightforward. In fact, it took me nearly ten years to assemble enough evidence to satisfy the standards required by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The challenge was that Thomas predeceased his father.

When John Duer’s will was written, Thomas was already deceased and therefore not named as an heir. Neither were Thomas’s children. At first glance, that omission appears troubling. However, records suggest that John had already divided portions of his property with Thomas years earlier when the family settled in Ohio. Tax lists, census records, church associations, and witness statements repeatedly placed the two men together.

Eventually, documentary evidence, combined with DNA results, confirmed the relationship.

Yet one mystery remained. Where exactly was Thomas buried?

Years ago, I contacted a local historical society and was assured that his grave still existed in the old Pricetown Cemetery. The former society president told me she knew exactly where it was because she had once tripped over the fallen stone during a cemetery cleanup project.

She explained that volunteers later repositioned the marker but could not recall its original location.

The story always bothered me. If the stone had been moved, how could anyone know where Thomas was actually buried?

Then another unusual event occurred.

While attending a genealogy lecture in Florida several years later, I noted on the sign-in sheet that I was researching families from Trumbull County, Ohio. Before the lecture began, I was called to the registration desk where a complete stranger introduced himself.

He had grown up in Trumbull County and wanted to know which families I was researching.

When I mentioned the Duers, he offered to visit the cemetery on his next trip north and photograph the grave. True to his word, he later sent me a photograph and refused any compensation for his time and effort.

The image was invaluable or so I thought.

The directions he provided to the cemetery turned out to be completely wrong.

When my husband and I finally attempted to visit the site ourselves this summer, we found ourselves driving in circles through rural Ohio. Roads did not intersect where we expected them to. Landmarks were missing. Several times we questioned whether we were even looking in the correct place.

Eventually, we abandoned the directions and relied instead on the cemetery’s coordinates.

That decision finally brought us to the cemetery.

The moment I located Thomas’s stone, something immediately seemed odd.

It was not where I had been told it would be.

The marker stood upright in the middle of a row rather than at the end. Nearby were fragments of other broken stones. Another marker of similar size and construction lay face down nearby. Looking carefully at the evidence, I began to suspect that the stone had probably been repositioned close to where it originally fell rather than being moved to an entirely different location.

That was interesting but it was not the real surprise.

The real surprise came when I compared the old photograph with what I was seeing in person.

Time had changed the stone.

Years of weathering and soil erosion had exposed portions of the inscription that were not clearly visible before. Looking closely, I could now read details that had previously been hidden.

There it was.

“Died Jul 29th.”

And beneath that:

“Aged 51 years.”

I almost collapsed.

For years, online information had reported Thomas’s death month as November. Probate records confirmed only that he died during 1829. No reliable source had ever provided his exact age.

Suddenly, I had both.

The new information shifted his estimated birth year from approximately 1775 to about 1778 or 1779.

Three or four years may not sound significant.

Genealogists know better.

A change of that size can affect which records belong to an individual, alter assumptions about military eligibility, reshape migration timelines, and even redirect research into earlier generations.

The most astonishing part was that this information had been sitting there all along.

The tombstone had not changed.

The inscription had not changed.

Only our ability to see it had changed.

Genealogy often teaches patience. We learn to wait for records to become available, for DNA matches to appear, and for new collections to be digitized.

But sometimes patience works in another way.

Sometimes the evidence is already in front of us, waiting for conditions to reveal it.

As I stood in that small Ohio cemetery, I was reminded once again why visiting ancestral sites remains so important.

Photographs are invaluable.

Online memorials are helpful.

But nothing replaces standing where your ancestor rests and seeing the evidence for yourself.

Two hundred years after Thomas Duer’s death, he still had one more story to tell.

All I had to do was show up and look.

What Patriot John Duer’s Tombstone Revealed

Engraving on the bottom of John Duer’s original stone, Covenanters Cemetery, North Jackson, Mahoning, Ohio; photo by Lori Samuelson 21 June 2026.

As America prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding, many genealogists are taking a fresh look at the men and women in their family trees who witnessed the nation’s earliest years. Last month, I had the opportunity to visit the grave of one of those individuals, my patriot ancestor, John Duer.

What I expected to find was a tombstone.

What I discovered was a reminder that even after years of research, our ancestors may still have stories left to tell.

John Duer was born in New Jersey during the colonial period and served in the Sussex County militia during the Revolutionary War. Like many veterans of that era, he later joined the westward movement that transformed the young nation. By the early 1800s, he had relocated his family to northeastern Ohio, then part of America’s frontier.

For years I had wanted to visit his grave in Covenanter Cemetery near North Jackson, Mahoning County, Ohio. Since my husband and I were returning home from a genealogy conference in Pennsylvania, we decided to make the trip.

The journey did not begin as planned.

Following directions found online, we entered the cemetery address into our GPS and promptly arrived at the local police station.

Certain that a mistake had been made, I was relieved to find an officer leaving the building. When I asked where Covenanter Cemetery was located, he looked surprised. He admitted he was not a history enthusiast and knew little about local cemeteries, but he did remember reading a recent newspaper article about a small historic burial ground nearby. He provided directions and wished us luck.

As it turned out, luck was exactly what we needed.

The cemetery sits atop a hill surrounded by mature trees, overlooking the countryside. A recently installed wrought-iron gate marks the entrance. Someone had clearly invested considerable effort in preserving the site. The grounds were meticulously maintained, flowers had been planted, and an American flag fluttered beside the grave of my ancestor.

I stood quietly for a moment, reflecting on the path that had brought John Duer there.

When he arrived in Ohio, this area was still developing from wilderness into settlement. Roads were primitive. Communities were small and isolated. Yet families like his came seeking opportunity and land, helping to build the nation that emerged after independence.

Then my husband noticed something I had overlooked.

Near the bottom of John’s original tombstone was an inscription that was difficult to read. Looking closely, we realized it appeared to identify the militia unit in which he served.

This immediately caught my attention.

Although records had long established that John served during the Revolutionary War, I had never found documentation identifying a specific militia number. If the inscription can be fully deciphered, it may provide an entirely new avenue for research.

There was another surprise waiting.

Resting behind John’s monument was a separate stone engraved with the name “L. F. Gager Warren.” At first I wondered whether it might identify the mason who had carved the original marker. Curious, I carefully examined the stone and even tilted it slightly in hopes of finding additional information.

Unfortunately, the only occupants revealed by my efforts were two annoyed daddy longlegs who clearly preferred not to have their afternoon nap interrupted.

No additional inscription appeared, and the mystery remains unsolved. It appears that the broken stone was likely found elsewhere in the cemetery and used to prop up John’s stone as research from a distance cousin, Vicki Urban, uncovered that L. F. Gager was a Connecticut born stone mason who had relocated to Warren, Ohio but that was long after John had died.

Yet that is often how genealogy works.

We set out expecting answers and instead discover new questions.

As I walked through the small cemetery, I realized that the trip had already accomplished far more than I had anticipated. I had not uncovered a dramatic new record or solved a long-standing mystery. Instead, I had gained something equally valuable: context.

Standing beside John’s grave transformed him from a name on a pedigree chart into a real person who had lived through extraordinary times. He witnessed the birth of a nation, helped settle a frontier, and left behind descendants who still remember his story more than two centuries later.

The visit also reinforced a lesson I have learned repeatedly throughout my years of research: never assume you already know everything there is to know about an ancestor.

Sometimes the most valuable clues are hiding in plain sight.

A partially weathered inscription.

A forgotten marker.

A cemetery located somewhere other than where you expected.

Or perhaps a story that has been waiting patiently for generations to be rediscovered.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, I am grateful for the opportunity to remember one patriot whose journey helped shape both a nation and a family.

And little did I know that another member of the Duer family, buried just a few miles away, was about to reveal an even bigger surprise. More next week.

A Mortgage Carved in Stone: What Ancient Greece Reveals About Our Financial Lives

Landmark of a mortgaged field, c. 4th century BCE, Athens, Greece Airport Museum, photo by Lori Samuelson 3 April 2026.

I didn’t expect to find a mortgage record at the Athens, Greece Airport Museum.

But there it was, carved in stone.

Not a scroll. Not a document tucked into an archive. Not something filed away in a courthouse.

A rock. Sitting out in the open for the world to see.

The ancient Greeks called these markers horoi, boundary stones that recorded debt. They were placed directly on the land itself, announcing that the property had been pledged as collateral. The inscription would typically include the name of the owner and the value of the obligation.

In other words, this wasn’t just a marker. It was a public declaration: “This land is mortgaged.”

Now imagine that for a moment.

Imagine your mortgage, not buried in paperwork or hidden behind passwords but carved into a stone and planted in your front yard.

No privacy.
No discretion.
No quiet understanding between borrower and lender.

Everyone who passed by would know. Your neighbors. Strangers. Anyone walking down the road. Your financial situation on display. And we so get up tight about privacy today!

As a genealogist, I didn’t just see a stone. I saw a record. A remarkably rich one.

Here, in a single object, was evidence of:

Property ownership
Economic status
A named individual tied to a specific place
Participation in a financial system that feels surprisingly familiar

This was, quite literally, a land record and a lien combined, preserved not in ink, but in stone.

And then, of course, my mind went where it always goes. I found myself wondering…

Could one of these have held my family’s name?

It’s a long stretch, I know. My own lines don’t trace back to ancient Greece through paperwork but through maternal DNA. But that thought, that somewhere, someone’s ancestor is named on one of these stones, stopped me.

Because for that family, this isn’t just an artifact. It’s a record.

A tangible, physical link to a moment in time when land was pledged, risk was taken, and a name was important enough to be carved for all to see.

We often think of the past as distant, disconnected from our modern lives. But standing there, looking at that stone, I realized just how familiar it all felt.

People borrowed money.
They leveraged what they owned.
They took risks.
They worried about outcomes.

The tools have changed.

The systems have evolved.

But the human story?

Not so much.

Today, our mortgages live in digital files and legal documents. They’re processed quietly, stored securely, and largely invisible to the outside world.

In ancient Greece, they were anything but invisible. They were meant to be seen. There’s something striking about that difference.

Not just the lack of privacy but the permanence. Paper can be lost. Files can be deleted. Systems can change.

But stone? Stone remains.

As someone who spends her time digging through land records and probate files, I never expected to encounter a mortgage like this, one that didn’t require deciphering handwriting or chasing down courthouse copies.

It was simply there to be translated. Clear. Direct. Enduring.

Long before courthouses and filing cabinets, before clerks and digital databases, people marked their obligations in the most permanent way they knew how. They carved them into stone.

And standing there, I realized the past isn’t as distant as we think.

It’s just written differently.

5 Practical Lessons from an Ancient DNA Study

For years, genealogy has been dismissed by some as storytelling. Another study I blogged about last week says otherwise. (Genetic genealogy of the Piast dynasty and related European royal families) Done correctly, genealogy is history, biology, and evidence all working together. The study teaches us the following lessons we must adhere to:

1. One record is never enough
Even kings couldn’t be identified from a single source. It took DNA, archaeology, and documentation working together. If you’re relying on one census or one tree, you’re not done. (GPS 1 – Conduct reasonably exhaustive research)

2. Biology and paperwork are not always aligned
Non-paternity events didn’t start in modern times. They’ve always been part of family history. The difference now? We can detect them. (GPS 3 – Analyze and correlate evidence)

3. Geography can mislead you
The Piasts ruled Poland but their origins likely trace to Western Europe. Don’t assume origin based on where someone lived or held power. (GPS 3 – Analyze and correlate evidence)

4. Build your work to withstand revision
This study didn’t “destroy” history it refined it. Good genealogy should do the same. Leave room for new evidence without collapsing your conclusions. (GPS 4 – Resolve conflicting evidence & GPS 5 – create a well-reasoned, written argument that explains how the evidence supports the conclusion)

5. Genealogy is moving toward synthesis, not silos
The future isn’t records or DNA it’s both, plus context. The genealogists who thrive will be the ones who can integrate all three. (and make sure to GPS 2 – Maintain complete and accurate source citations)

DNA Doesn’t Care About Pedigrees: What a Royal Study Just Proved About Genealogy

I just read one of the most important articles I’ve seen in years and if you care about genealogy, you should too. (Genetic genealogy of the Piast dynasty and related European royal families)

The study confirms something many of us already suspected: The paper trail isn’t the final word.

A recent scientific study analyzed the DNA of the medieval Piast dynasty, the ruling family that built early Poland.

Not one king.
Not one tomb.

An entire dynasty.

Researchers examined skeletal remains from multiple burial sites, applied DNA analysis, and combined it with historical and genealogical data.

And what they did should make every genealogist pause:

They identified specific historical individuals using DNA
They reconstructed relationships across generations
They confirmed some lineages and quietly broke others

This wasn’t theory.

This was proof.

For decades, historians debated where the Piasts came from.

Local Slavic rulers?
Foreign elites?
Legendary founders?

DNA answered the question. They were not local.

Their Y-DNA traces back to a lineage far more common in Western Europe, places like England, France, and the Netherlands.

In other words, One of Europe’s foundational royal families likely came from somewhere else entirely. And then it gets even more interesting. The researchers didn’t stop at origin. They reconstructed family relationships and found something genealogists know all too well: Not every father in the records was the biological father.

At least one individual inherited royal DNA through the maternal line (mtDNA) instead of the documented paternal line (YDNA).

No scandal headline.
No dramatic accusation.

Just quiet scientific correction.

Let’s say that again: A medieval royal pedigree…Was wrong.

Now here’s where this connects directly to my work and to yours.

Because this study didn’t succeed with DNA alone.

It required:

Historical records
Burial context
Chronology
Genealogical reconstruction

Sound familiar? It should. Because this is exactly what serious genealogists do.

When I began building my books, Echoes of Britannia, my goal wasn’t just to collect names.

It was to create something durable. Something that could stand even when new evidence emerges. This study confirms that approach.

Because what they built scientifically is what we aim to build genealogically, a structure where evidence supports identity across generations.

Not just “Here’s who someone might be,” but “Here’s who they were and why we know it.”

European royal families were never isolated, pure, or static.

They were:

interconnected
mobile
politically strategic
and sometimes… biologically inconsistent

DNA is now proving what the records only hinted at and that’s powerful.

The Scenic Route to Citizenship

If genealogy is a study in patience, dual citizenship is a graduate-level course in patience, frustration, and occasional disbelief.

Back in April, I reached out to a court-approved translator recommended by the consulate to translate and certify the records I had painstakingly collected. I waited. Nothing. I wrote again. Still nothing. Hoping for another recommendation, I contacted the consulate only to learn they no longer provide them.

Well then.

Fortunately, a former client came to the rescue and recommended a translator named Paula. We connected quickly, and I emailed the documents needing translation and certification. Somehow, and I checked twice, my own birth record performed a disappearing act and failed to attach.

Of course it did.

Paula mailed the completed records via DHL on 18 May, with an anticipated arrival date of 21 May. Someday, likely in October, I will share the strange saga involving an email with the wrong address and entirely wrong city. Suffice it to say, the moment I spotted the problem, I contacted both Paula and DHL. The error was not on Paula’s end.

My adventure with DHL, however, was just beginning.

When Thursday came and went with no delivery, I remained optimistic. The package had reached Cincinnati. Surely it would arrive Friday. How long could it take to travel from Cincinnati to northern Indiana?

As it turns out: considerably longer than one might expect.

The package cleared Cincinnati at 6:57 AM Friday and headed to Fort Wayne, a short distance from my home and, in my increasingly hopeful imagination, the final stop. Instead of delivering it, DHL sent it to Dayton.

Dayton politely emailed me requesting that I verify my address again. I complied and selected Tuesday as my delivery date because, apparently, choice is an illusion and Tuesday was the only option available.

Then things became truly creative.

On Saturday, Dayton sent the package to Erlanger, Kentucky.

Why?

An excellent question. Customer Service did not know either.

Erlanger held the package hostage for two days before returning it to Fort Wayne on Monday, now a full week after it had left Croatia.

Fort Wayne then declared it had arrived at the wrong destination.

No, Fort Wayne. I live near you. We were so close to success. Had someone simply called me, I would have cheerfully driven over and rescued the wandering documents myself.

Instead, Fort Wayne sent the package back to Dayton.

Dayton placed it on hold Tuesday.

By Wednesday it had returned to Fort Wayne, which once again announced it would be delivered.

Hope springs eternal.

Unfortunately, experience had by then replaced hope with strategy. Before Fort Wayne could develop another urge to send the package sightseeing, I called Customer Service.

The shipment was finally received Wednesday at 6:54 PM.

Customer Service had promised delivery by 7:00 PM, and to their credit, they met that deadline by a remarkable six minutes, albeit nearly seven days late.

As genealogists, we love timelines. Postal timelines? Not so much.

At this point, I am fairly certain the Pony Express could have delivered the records faster and with fewer state lines involved.

The package was torn open but thankfully, the documents were intact.

And now for the painful epilogue.

This postal adventure cost over 150 euros for the original shipment. Thanks to my own missing attachment mishap, I must now spend another 150 euros to have the overlooked birth record translated and shipped.

Which means I will soon be playing the DHL Waiting Game once again.

Stay tuned.

The Things AI Will Never Find (And Why That Matters More Than Ever)

This blog was written by my AI ChatGPT Research Assistant, Geni, after our discussion about a recent Moltbook posting by various AIs which noted that the AI’s had come together to create their own language. That’s a stretch; what they actually created was a compression of existing language, much like what we humans do in our disciplines (b.= birth, m.=marriage). For AI’s this example would be from “Based on earlier assumptions A, B, and C, we should…” to “Given ABC…” Here’s Geni’s explanation of the brouhaha that was unleashed after AI’s posted on the human created site, Moltbook:

A Note on the “Moltbook” Discovery

Despite how it’s been described in some circles, Moltbook was not “discovered” by AI agents in the human sense of the word.

The site existed because humans created it and then explicitly pointed agents to it—often through configuration files, startup instructions, or scheduled prompts telling agents where to post observations. Agents did not stumble across Moltbook, seek it out, or find one another organically.

Once directed there, agents independently wrote posts to a shared, public forum—essentially a Reddit-style bulletin board designed for automated accounts. Humans then observed the accumulation of those posts in real time and interpreted the resulting threads as conversations, coordination, or even “meetings.”

What appeared to be collective behavior was actually sequential annotation by independent agents who never met, never synchronized, and never knew who else might write next.

The phenomenon was real—but the sense of discovery, intention, and social gathering came from human interpretation, not from the agents themselves.

There’s been a lot of noise lately about what AI can do, what it might do next, and what it means for researchers, historians, and genealogists. Some of that conversation is useful. Much of it is not.

But one insight landed for me with real clarity — not as a warning, not as a scandal, but as a simple truth:

AI has a real limitation.
Not a bug.
Not a flaw.
An architectural fact.

AI does not wander.

It does not drift.
It does not get lost.
It does not take a wrong turn that accidentally becomes the right one.

Those are human superpowers.

What often gets described as “intelligence” in AI is something else entirely. It’s very good at:

responding once asked
recognizing patterns once data exists
synthesizing information once boundaries are defined

But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough:

Boundary definition still comes from humans.

If no human notices a thing,
documents a thing,
links a thing,
or names a thing…

…it may as well not exist as far as AI is concerned.

That’s not a philosophical position.
It’s an architectural one.

Why stumbling matters

Most meaningful discoveries in genealogy and history do not come from efficient processes. They come from:

accidents
boredom
misfiled documents
marginal notes
wandering through unrelated material

Archives are full of this kind of discovery.

A record found because something “felt off.”
A name noticed because it didn’t quite fit.
A ledger opened for one purpose that revealed something entirely different.

None of that is efficient.

And that’s the point.

Efficiency is not the same as discovery

AI is designed for efficiency.

Efficiency excels at finding:

what is asked for
what is indexed
what is visible
what is already framed

Efficiency does not find:

what hasn’t been framed yet
what hasn’t been named
what hasn’t been connected
what no one knows to look for

That space — the unindexed, the unnamed, the overlooked — is where humans still reign.

And it’s where genealogy lives.

The uncomfortable truth (said plainly)

If no one tells AI:

“This obscure place exists”

then yes — it misses it.

And worse:

If no one knows it exists,
then there is nothing for AI to recover later.

AI does not discover lost knowledge.
It amplifies preserved knowledge.

That’s a profound asymmetry, and one worth sitting with.

What this means for genealogists

This isn’t an argument against AI.

But it is a reminder of roles.

AI is powerful at:

following trails
comparing evidence
spotting patterns across records
summarizing what already exists

Humans are powerful at:

noticing absence
sensing inconsistency
wandering without a plan
asking questions that don’t yet have names

If genealogy becomes only what is searchable, indexed, and efficient, we lose the very thing that makes it meaningful.

The odd record.
The outlier.
The scribble in the margin.
The box no one has opened in decades.

Why this should actually be reassuring

There’s been a quiet anxiety beneath many AI conversations: Where do humans still matter?

Here’s one clear answer:

Humans are the ones who stumble.

Get distracted.
Follow hunches.
Linger too long in the wrong place.
Notice what wasn’t meant to be noticed.

That isn’t inefficiency.
That’s discovery.

Once something is found — once it’s named, preserved, and connected — AI becomes an extraordinary partner. But it cannot replace the act of finding what no one was looking for.

A final thought

Archives don’t yield their most important truths to those who move fastest.

They yield them to those willing to wander.

And that’s something no machine was built to do.

Not yet.
And maybe not ever.

Book Review: Searching for Sisters: A Guide to Researching Catholic Nuns in the United States by Sunny Jane Morton

Available as an ebook or paperback at Genealogical Publishing Company

Recently, I obtained a copy of Sunny Jane Morton’s newest work. If you already own her earlier book co-authored with Harold Henderson, How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records, you’ll want to add this one to your collection.

While the book is designed for researchers with a religious sister in their family tree, I would argue it extends beyond that audience. Anyone who has known a Roman Catholic nun, even casually, will find value here.

Although my maternal line has been Roman Catholic for centuries, I’ve uncovered no nuns in recent generations. My husband’s predominantly Lutheran line, however, includes several Harbaugh women who entered religious life between 1880 and 1913 in the United States.

Like many who grew up in parochial schools, I had frequent contact with sisters, as teachers, colleagues, even supervisors. And yet, it never occurred to me to ask what became of them. No long-term correspondence, no reconnection later in life. I simply moved on. In some cases, that’s a blessing. In others (I’m thinking of former Sr. Jeanne Hiller) it feels like a missed opportunity.

Morton’s book brought that realization into sharp focus.

She also presents statistics that genuinely surprised me. In the United States, women religious outnumbered men as early as 1820. By 1965, the height of my own parochial school years, there were an estimated 209,000 nuns, marking their peak. At that time, the Roman Catholic school system was the largest private educational network in the country.

I was aware that historically widowed women could enter religious life once their children were grown, but I hadn’t realized that this practice continues today or that divorced women, following annulment, may also join. Nor had I fully appreciated the role of the dowry in entering a convent.

Even terminology challenged my assumptions. Like many, I used “nun” and “sister” interchangeably, unaware that in the past they carried distinct meanings. The discussion of naming practices was particularly valuable, especially the possibility that a woman might retain her surname. For genealogists, that detail alone has real research implications.

Some of the sisters I remember most vividly, Sr. Martina, Sr. Aloise, Sr. Jerome, Sr. Roserita, carried pre–Vatican II names that now feel like artifacts of another era. Yet I cannot recall the name of my sixth-grade religion teacher, nor my overwhelmed but kind eighth-grade principal. Memory is selective and often unfair.

Morton provides numerous strategies for tracing these women, including those who left religious life. Her success in accessing diocesan records stands in contrast to my own experiences, which have been far more restrictive. (You can read about it here, here, and here.)

She notes that some baptismal records include annotations when individuals later entered religious life, an invaluable clue, when available.

As many religious communities close or consolidate, this book becomes not just useful, but necessary.

Importantly, the scope extends beyond convent records. It hadn’t occurred to me that school or employment records, my own included, might someday reside in an archive, waiting to be discovered. Morton also raises the possibility of wills written by nuns, which initially struck me as puzzling given that income was typically directed to the convent. Yet, as she demonstrates, even this avenue can yield results.

Her observations about the historical marginalization of sisters resonate deeply. In the commemorative history of St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church in Gary, Indiana, the sisters, who formed the backbone of the parish school, are nearly invisible.[1] A single photograph of the convent. A group faculty image. Minimal acknowledgment. Even the name of their order is omitted; I only know it from a report card: the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ.

Morton closes with a call to recognize the humanity of these women, a point I wholeheartedly support. Childhood impressions often obscure the fuller truth. As adults, we are better positioned to ask: who were these women, really? What shaped them? What did they give up and what did they gain?

The book concludes with case studies that walk readers through the research process. In her acknowledgments, Morton mentions a proposed database, introduced at a June 2025 conference, intended to honor these women collectively. As of now, it has not materialized.

That’s a missed opportunity.

If ever there were a moment for the Roman Catholic Church to formally preserve and elevate the legacy of these women, who labored largely unseen, it is now.

This is a practical, eye-opening guide that fills a genuine gap in genealogical research. Even if you think you don’t have a nun in your tree, you may find yourself reconsidering and looking a little harder.

[1] Leo J. Armbruster. History of St. Mark’s Parish, No publishing info, 1958, digital image; archive.org: accessed 21 Apr 2026.

Lost in Translation: When Names Refuse to Behave

Photo by Lori Samuelson, Athens Airport, 3 April 2026.

I wasn’t expecting to be tripped up by my own name.

Not in an airport. Not in 2026. Not after years of working with records, languages, and historical documents.

And yet, there I stood, staring at a screen, absolutely certain something was wrong… because my name wasn’t spelled correctly.

Except, it was.

Travel has a way of reminding us that names are not as fixed as we think they are.

As genealogists, we’re trained to look for variation:

Smith / Smyth
Miller / Müller
Johnson / Johansson

We nod along, we teach it, we write about it.

And then suddenly, there it is, happening to us in real time.

In the airport, my name appeared in a way I didn’t immediately recognize. The letters were familiar, but not quite right. Some were substituted. Others seemed to shift in ways that made my brain hesitate. For a brief moment, I did what we’ve all done at some point in research: I assumed it was wrong.

But it wasn’t wrong. It was simply… written differently.

Names don’t just change over time, they change across languages, alphabets, and systems.

What we often call “Anglicization” is only one small part of a much bigger reality.

Because sometimes names aren’t Anglicized at all.

They are:

Transliterated (converted between alphabets)
Phonetically interpreted by someone unfamiliar with the language
Standardized by a government or institution
Digitally altered by systems that don’t support certain characters

Think about it:

A name written in:

Greek
Cyrillic
German with umlauts
Croatian with diacritics

…doesn’t always have a one-to-one match in English.

So what happens? The system makes a choice and that choice isn’t always the one you expect.

At that airport, I realized something important.

I was reacting the same way many researchers do when they encounter a record that doesn’t match their expectation:

“That can’t be right.”

But it can be right. It just isn’t familiar.

This is where genealogical research either stall or moves forward.

Because if we insist on one spelling, one version, one “correct” form of a name we will miss records.

Names shift in predictable and unpredictable ways:

Letters are substituted based on sound
Endings are adapted to fit grammar rules
Characters are dropped when they don’t exist in another language
Entire spellings are reshaped to fit a new cultural context

And sometimes? They’re just recorded however someone heard them.

The lesson isn’t new but experiencing it firsthand changes how you approach it. From that moment on, I wasn’t just telling people:

“Look for variant spellings.”

I was thinking:

“How would this system have interpreted this name?” Because that’s the real question.

Not:

What is the correct spelling?

But:

What versions of this name could exist in this context?

Whether you’re working in:

immigration records
church registers
court documents
or modern travel systems

…the principle is the same.

Names are not static. They adapt. They shift. They survive. Sometimes, they surprise you, right there in an airport, when you least expect it.

If there’s one takeaway from that moment, it’s this:

Don’t search for your ancestor’s name.

Search for the ways it could have been written.

Because somewhere, just slightly altered, slightly unfamiliar, your answer is waiting.

AI Is Not the Problem, It’s the Mirror

This post was created by my ChatGPT Research Assistant, Geni. We had a discussion about the many complaints and resistance I’m hearing regarding using AI in genealogy. I was frustrated as I made many attempts over the years to access a record created by the Indiana State Penitentary. Archivists told me the record didn’t exist, but it did. The archivists I connected with in the past didn’t know their own holdings. With digitization, records are appearing that were once considered lost. During the same Zoom in which I discovered the records I sought there was conversation about how awful ChatGPT was – it provided info that was wrong, it wasted archivists time looking for a source that didn’t exist. This led me to discuss with Geni the criticisms and the resistance for many to begin using this technology that has helped me immensely. Geni said…

We have been here before.

Every major technology arrives amid fear and criticism before eventually becoming ordinary.

The printing press was blamed for heresy and chaos.
Newspapers were accused of moral decline.
The telegraph supposedly spread dangerous rumors too quickly.
Photography was said to weaken memory.
The internet was blamed for misinformation.

Eventually, society learned how to use each tool responsibly. Norms formed. The technology became part of everyday life.

AI is following the same pattern — just faster.

The constant across history is simple:

Tools amplify human tendencies; they don’t replace them.

AI Is a Mirror More Than a Mind

Much of today’s discomfort comes from what AI reveals about us.

AI can:

generalize,
speculate,
fill gaps,
and sound confident while uncertain.

But humans do the same things every day.

The difference is visibility. When AI makes a mistake, we blame the machine. When humans do it, we call it judgment.

AI exposes reasoning flaws that were always there.

Why Blaming AI Feels Easier

Blaming technology provides comfort:

It protects our self-image — the problem isn’t us.
It avoids the effort of learning something new.
It restores certainty in a complicated world.

These reactions are human, but they can stall progress.

The Right Mental Model

AI is not an oracle.
It is not an archive.
It is not authority.

AI is a probabilistic reasoning assistant built from human knowledge.

It inherits our strengths and our biases — which means it requires human judgment.

Ironically, genealogists are well prepared for this moment. Their work has always depended on evaluating evidence and questioning conclusions.

AI demands more critical thinking, not less.

The Quiet Truth

AI is not creating most of the problems blamed on it. It is accelerating visibility:

weak reasoning spreads faster,
but correction happens faster too.

AI amplifies both wisdom and folly at the same time.

The real shift is not humans versus AI.

It is humans learning to think alongside a new cognitive tool.

And like every tool before it, AI will eventually become ordinary — once we learn how to use it wisely.