The DeKalb County Indiana Genealogy Society (DKIGS) regrets to have to reschedule the Ask A Genealogist event that was to be held on Saturday, January 13 from 9:30-11:30 am at Willennar Genealogy Center due to inclement weather.
If you are not a member of DCIGS and would like to receive information on when the event will be rescheduled, please email genealogyatheart@gmail.com and we’ll let you know.
Stay safe, warm, and dry!
A New Year is always time to make plans and set goals. I’ve just completed a series on Artificial Intelligence (AI) so it has hopefully given you some ideas to boost your family history output.
Two years ago I blogged about my one month deadline to write my personal memoir. You can read about it here. I strongly believe we genealogists often neglect the importance of documenting our own lives. Sure, we know what happened but just like our ancestors who didn’t leave many records, someday, someone will not be happy with you for doing the same.
Recently I was given the opportunity by author, photographer, and genealogist Rebecca Shamblin to review her new book, Leaving a Legacy: Turn Your Family Tree Into A Family Book (Life Remembered Press, 2023).
My long time readers know I’m not one to gush over the latest and greatest. I take a more middle of the road approach, looking for the pros and cons.
Seriously, I cannot find one con in this book. I can’t even come up with a suggestion for improvement.
This is a must read book if you are considering publishing a family history or genealogy book. I’m an eBook author but I understand the reasons that a hard cover book would sometimes be preferred.
If you thought that the task to write your family’s story was too time consuming or expensive to publish, think again! Rebecca has, through trial and tribulation, worked through the process several times and the reader can benefit from her experiences.
I strongly recommend that you purchase this book even if you aren’t ready to embark on creating a book. There are so many helpful technology tips – short cuts, how to, and step by step directions that it will benefit you in other computerized tasks you need to accomplish.
I’ll only give away one of the tips and it was such an Ah Ha moment for me. I don’t want to get into the debate of whether footnotes or endnotes are the way to go but suffice it to say, in my opinion, there is time for one and a time for another. Recently I submitted an article for publication that required endnotes. The endnotes in Word were formatted as Roman Numerals. My goodness, did that look clunky. Rebecca provides directions on how you can turn the Roman numerals into Arabic numbers effortlessly. Wish I had known that trick before I submitted the article! Definitely read the Word Processor Settings chapter.
Rebecca uses Family Tree Maker (FTM) software. Read the chapter even if you don’t use FTM as both RootsMagic and Legacy Family Tree can be used similarly to what the book describes. When in doubt, send your software company a message for help. Competition is fierce these days so it’s in their best interest to help you out and keep your patronage.
My favorite part of Rebecca’s book is how she handles sensitive genealogical discoveries. We all have them. One of my most sought out lectures is Skeletons in the Closet. Not sure how to write about that illegitimate child? Definitely follow Rebecca’s suggestions. She even provides excerpts from her own family history books to serve as examples.
I also loved the Distribution chapter as you want your book to be available long after you’re gone. Please do give a free book to your local library and if possible, to a larger library like Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana – they have an entire large room that contains family genealogies. I’m not an accountant but check with yours to see if you can get a tax deduction for your donation.
To purchase a copy of Leaving a Legacy, click this link on Amazon. Let me know when you’ve finished your family book and where I can read a copy.
Blogger stats have identified the following must read of my blogs from last year:
1. Genealogy Organization Disappointments
2. Can AI Solve Your Brick Walls?
3. Evaluating Ancestry.com’s ThruLines
4. Using AI to Write a Genealogical Narrative
5. Researching at FamilySearch Library
Grab a cup of coffee/cocoa/tea and check out the links!
Happy New Year! Hard to believe this is my last blog of 2023. I’ve been writing about using Artificial Intelligence in family history research for the past few weeks. I hope it has been helpful and taken the fear out of the tech. Whenever I’ve talked about it with my personal FAN Club, I get the same reaction which is either a sign of the cross and the question, Haven’t you seen the terminator movie? to Oh, I want to learn how to do that. Absolutely no reactions in between!
Which I think is quite interesting because I’m a middle of the roader. I love the time saving aspect and the assistance in handling large amounts of data to analyze but I also am very cognizant that this tech is still in it’s infancy, makes mistakes (like people do), and due to lack of transparency from the companies involved, we have no idea what training information was used. So, it could have been an item that was under copywrite, it could have been biased information, or it could have been false information.
That said, I still think it can be useful. I really miss an early Google AI attempt called Picasa. I had saved all of my family photos there and it could identify family members that were infants I could not. I have two sets of twin cousins and in some of the photos I can’t tell them apart. Picasa was able to separate them out individually.
Today, AI can also create pictures. I haven’t tried to input photos from say, 1890, and ask it to take the person in the photo and create a new picture in 1820 period clothes but I suspect that can be done. Sounds interesting and want to get started?
Through ChatGPT I use Dall-E. It has become one in the same since November. Before that, Dall-E was Beta but now they are joined. Here’s how to use AI to get a picture.
I will be one of seven professional genealogists giving a lecture at an upcoming genealogical conference later in 2024. I will be using AI to create some of the slide pics. For some slides, I had an idea but for others, I let AI create for me with only the slide title as the instruction.
Ethically, I believe that I need to credit AI for the pictures, just as I would source any photo that I use.
I hope you are enjoying the holidays with family and friends. I look forward to 2024 and providing you with more heartfelt and informative blogs. All the best to you and yours!
As the year closes, I’d like to reflect on some luck I had this past year. I was able to find the school enumeration records for my husband’s grandmother by getting a tip after writing a journal article. I hired a genealogist in Croatia who knew someone I could hire as a driver who just happened to have had a Ph.D. in archaeology and just happened to have done her dissertation on the area my ancestors once lived. Another lucky strike was writing to a small library in Ohio to ask if they had a list of Masons from the 1820s and getting a response they did not but they had in their vertical drawer notes from an unknown researcher that provided the source for a lost deed that hadn’t been filed until years after it was made and hadn’t been included in the index.
Those were all wonderful unexpected finds but I think the best luck came when I went cemetery hunting.
The photo above is just one of many that I took this past summer as I traveled across Ohio and Indiana searching for ancestor’s graves, then cleaning and photographing them. The one showing in the right corner is for my husband’s second great grandfather and his second wife, Maria Erickson.
Notice where the car is parked? I had no idea where in the cemetery the stone we were looking for was located. I only had a map for one cemetery, Graceland in Valparaiso, Indiana, but the sections weren’t marked in the cemetery so the map was useless. Somehow, my ancestor GPS was fully on as except for Graceland, hubbie and I found every grave in record time. I just drove in and something told me to STOP!!!! So we did.
Usually cemetery hunting is a spring-summer-early fall activity but two weeks ago one of my adult kids and I went to Chicago. The weather was frightful – sleeting, windy, and bitterly cold. We had wanted to go to the Field Museum but they had closed the parking lot close by, there was no street parking left and I didn’t want to pay for the parking garage down the street so we decided to go to the cemetery.
I realize that is a tad weird to those who aren’t interested in family history but this worked for us. I’ve written about Drusilla Williams DeWolf Thompson before and I’ve shared the also lucky find of the picture below in an attic in Dayton, Ohio where Dru never once set foot:
Dru is the woman with her head on her hand under the tree. Husband Thomas is impersonating Abe Lincoln. Daughter Mary is to his right, that’s my husband’s great grandmother.
You would think this stone on a bleak December day would be easy to find but it wasn’t. We had a map, too. We could see it was close to the cemetery office so we decided to just park there and inquire where to find it. The sweet office clerk donned his jacket and said it wasn’t far and he was right. It was just a few yards from the office. I wouldn’t have discovered it, though, without his help as the limestone is now barely readable. The trees are gone, as is the fence. The stone is off kilter as the base has eroded. It’s missing the top. It’s also filthy:
You can see that other stones surrounding it are also gone.
The cemetery does not allow families to clean stones so I’ve consulted with a company who will go out next spring and take a look.
I had always wanted to visit these folks as their story fascinates me – arriving in Chicago by wagon in the 1840s, surviving the fire, and watching Chicago grow into a metropolis. If only they had left their memoirs!
As a new year peaks around the corner I can’t wait for more exciting finds. Hope your holidays are delightful and that you continue to follow my fabulous genealogical adventures next year. I’m planning to take another AI course through the National Genealogical Society and two more heritage trips. Lady Luck is who I’m hoping to accompany me. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
Previously I blogged about using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create narratives of your ancestor’s lives. Today, I’m going to show you how you can take those online classes you are attending and make concise notes from the chat box.
Why the chat box you may think? Because the chat box often contains important information that participants have thought about the subject to add – new questions to ask the speaker – and resources and links that someone attending found useful.
Here’s the how to turn your chat box chatter into useful info:
You can also do this from YouTube videos for the class itself if you don’t have time to view it. Here’s a how to get a copy of the transcript. Then, follow the three steps noted above. You can tell your AI helper to make a title of the video you watched, add the date, and add the speaker’s name, too. Personally, I’d save the results to my Dropbox as I keep syllabi there to refer to in the future, if needed.
Like last week, my answer is a strong maybe! I’ve been researching my John Duer, Patriot, and his relationship to his purported son, Thomas for YEARS! I have so much indirect evidence and one piece that does state Thomas was the son of John but it is in a collection made beginning in 1865 that doesn’t provide the source. Of course!
So, I turned to AI to get its take on the problem.
Before I tell you the result, I want to share with you how to take data and create an Excel table using AI. It’s so super simple and saves a lot of time. WARNING: Like with all new tech, you much check for accuracy. Don’t assume it is 100% correct. Even with the time taken for that, it will be a time saver in the long run.
John Duer was born on January 19, 1748, in Cranbury, Middlesex, New Jersey. Various sources, including family data collections and genealogical websites, document this event. The death of John’s mother, Mary Ann Hollingshead Duer, occurred in 1751 in Newton, Sussex, New Jersey, although specific source documentation is absent beyond public family trees.
In 1773, John married Susannah Miller in Sussex, New Jersey. Their marriage is recorded in the Family Data Collection and referenced in genealogical records from Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio. The couple had several children, the first of which was Esther Duer Hopkins, born in Monmouth, New Jersey, in 1774. However, there is a discrepancy in her birth location, as other sources suggest Sussex County, New Jersey, as her birthplace.
John’s military service is confused with that of a cousin who served in the Pennsylvania militia. Despite this error, records from Ohio acknowledge John Duer’s service, including listings in the official roster of American Revolution soldiers buried in Ohio.
Thomas Duer, John’s son, was born in 1775 in Sussex, New Jersey, with multiple sources confirming this, though his gravestone lacks specific dates. Jonathan Duer followed on November 11, 1777, also in Sussex, with his life documented through family data collections and census records.
Joseph Duer’s birth in 1779 is only supported by public family trees, lacking concrete source documentation. In 1780, Mary Duer Hazen, another of John’s daughters, was born in Sussex. Her lineage is established through the DAR lineage book and a family history published in 1947.
John Duer was a church member at the First Baptist Church of Wantage, Sussex, New Jersey, in 1783, with historical records from the Sussex County Historical Society likely supporting this fact. His military service is further documented in DAR and New Jersey Revolutionary War records, as well as in family genealogical files.
In the following years, John resided in Newton, Sussex, New Jersey, where he is listed as a vestryman in a history of Christ Church, and in Hanover Township, Morris County, New Jersey, as indicated by tax records. He also engaged in land transactions, including purchasing land that would later become part of West Virginia, and in 1797, he was a resident of Mansfield Township, Sussex, New Jersey, acting as a bondsman.
John’s life from 1798 to 1829 included various land dealings, military service records, family events such as the deaths of his sister Anna Duer Hull and his son Thomas Duer, and his own death on April 3, 1831, in Jackson Township, Trumbull, Ohio. His will was probated in March 1832, and his estate included guardianship arrangements for his grandchildren.
The narrative concludes with references to Thomas Duer’s estate papers, tax records, and land transactions that involved John Duer and his son Thomas. The document also notes a DNA connection to the family through Elizabeth Suriner and references to historical maps and newspaper articles related to the Duer family in Hubbard, Trumbull, Ohio.
Interesting, huh?! Nowhere in the csv data did it say that Thomas was John’s son. My headings were Date, Event, Place, Source, Name. Would this be accepted by a lineage society? Definitely not but it was an unbiased analysis of the indirect evidence. I did provide in the prompt to look for a relationship of John and Thomas Duer but did not state it was father-son.
I’d love to hear what you find in using AI to establish relationship.
Prompt Chaining in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to me just means taking baby steps to get to your desired end product. It’s like wanting your three year old to follow four directions but that’s too much so you give them three and then add the fourth.
What I wanted to do was use AI to extract (pull out) key parts of newspaper articles about my grandfather Edwin Anton Leininger to do the following:
Create an executive summary of the articles
List the FAN club noted in the articles
Determine the FAN Club relationship to my grandfather
List locations from the articles
Note dates from the articles
Create a narrative based on the relationships and key details from the articles
Think about how long this would take you to do. It took ChatGPT less than 5 minutes.
Was it entirely accurate? Nope, and here’s where it got creepy.
My first step was to select six newspaper articles over the time period my grandfather lived and from various locations. Chat GPT can only handle about four newspaper articles at a time so I uploaded those first sets (one from 1918 where he was collecting money for the war effort for YMCA in Ohio, a 1970 article about the historic dairy farm he once ran in Indiana, a 1950 story about a calf who had escaped from the farm, a 1940 article about him buying the farm). I didn’t upload them in chronological order. I then asked for a summary of the four articles. What I received was all correct; each article had the heading taken from the article and key points bulleted.
Next I uploaded his obituary and a photo from 1944 with a short heading of his job with the railroads. I asked AI to add the two latest articles to the summary.
But AI has a short memory so what I received was the summary for just the two last articles. I wrote a new prompt asking for a creation of an executive summary for the articles combined.
AI did as I asked so I then requested to extract the names and provide relationships. I also asked to list locations from the articles. Here’s where it got weird!
First, there were errors with names. I quickly figured out Mrs. Troncale was misread and should have been Tronolone. AI didn’t figure out that my grandfather was listed by different names – Edwin A., E.A., and Ed. AI thought these were all separate individuals. It also placed locations with names; technically this is correct as the name of a dairy is a name and I hadn’t given a clear direction for geographic names only.
I informed AI of the mistakes/corrections and received a new list. I then asked AI to substitute first names for women who had “Mrs.” only. That was done correctly.
In reviewing the last list three names appeared that were related to my grandfather but I didn’t recall those being in the articles. I went back and read all six articles. Nope, none of these names appeared. Where did this come from?
I asked Chat GPT to let me know where the names were found. I received an apology and a name removal.
The creepy part here is that the names were correctly related to my grandfather. One was his sister, another was his mother-in-law, and the third was his grandfather. How in the world did AI happen to select the right first and last names that were related to him?
We know AI is not 100% accurate but to select three people, all with different last names, and tie them to the extraction when they weren’t listed in simply weird. So I asked (response above). The response doesn’t provide the answer. I don’t believe AI is psychic and the information came from somewhere. I suspect that information is in fact being pulled externally and perhaps not now, but had been in training.
The end product, a summary of the six newspaper articles taken from throughout my grandfather’s life, was correct. Here it is:
A Legacy Through Time
Edwin Leininger, often referred to by his acquaintances as Ed or E.A. Leininger, led a life characterized by commitment and dedication. Born in Mercer County, Ohio, he later made Fort Wayne his home for nine years. Professionally, Edwin was recognized for his unwavering commitment to the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he diligently worked as a car inspector. Later in life, he became an
indispensable figure at the Hobart post office, where he was affectionately referred to as “the man with the muscles.” For years, he efficiently managed both outgoing and incoming mail, handling approximately 9,500 pieces of outgoing mail and 2,000 pieces of incoming mail daily.
On the personal front, Edwin’s life was richly woven with familial bonds. In his earlier years, he was married to Lola Leininger. Together, they embraced the joys of parenthood with the birth of their children: a son, Guy Leininger; a daughter, Mrs. Bonita Cook; and another daughter who later became Mrs. Ted Tronolone. Later in life, Edwin’s heart found companionship again with Gladys
Leininger. Through this union, Edwin warmly welcomed Gladys’ three sons, Duane, Donald, and Capt. Robert Landfair, as his step-sons.
Edwin’s family circle extended further with his brothers, Sam and Lew Leininger, and a sister, Bertha, who later became Bertha Pifer. The bond of the Leiningers remained strong, binding them together through the tapestry of time.
In 1976, Edwin’s journey on Earth reached its sunset in Fort Wayne. Yet, his legacy—reflected in his professional dedication, familial bonds, and community impact—lives on.
NOTE: This blog was posted on 25 Nov 2023 on the Empowering Genealogists with Artificial Intelligence Facebook group. Since my blog two weeks ago on using AI to write a narrative, I’ve been getting a lot of questions and comments. I’ve been told that AI doesn’t work with some sites; I have found that to be not true. I have also found a temporary work around for footnote/endnote citations that look more like what genealogists use – simply provide this prompt: Please write all footnotes in Chicago format style. You will have to go back and fill in some info, like the enumeration district for censuses, but it will be closer to what we are used to seeing.
I was interested in seeing how a narrative summary with endnotes from various sources that had similar data would be written.
I used the same prompt: You are a professional genealogist and expert writer. Please write a narrative summary with endnotes from the attached file. (AI seems to place all sources at the end, whether you make the request as a footnote or endnote. This could be due to my requested writings being short.) The endnotes for the example below are funky looking because they are sources from sources, meaning the information that was being compared was the main source, like Ancestry.com, and not where the source cited in Ancestry.com came from.
Each request was made using a new message on ChatGPT.
The files I uploaded individually were:
Ancestry.com from Life Story with and without AI. AI selected “What was (region) like when (individual) was (event).”
FamilySearch.org Source/Detail and About
FamilyTreeMaker from Individual Report
LegacyFamilyTree from Other Reports>Individual Summary
MyHeritage.com side view of Family Tree for named individual
Roots Magic from Reports> Individual Summary
The information for all but FamilySearch.org was generated by me over the years. The data was always entered into Ancestry.com, then synched with RootsMagic and FamilyTreeMaker. A gedcom from Ancestry was uploaded to both LegacyFamilyTree and MyHeritage so no media is available on either of those sites. FamilySearch.org does include a minimal amount of information from me but most of the data was generated by family members.
I then gave ChatGPT the following prompt:
Today you are an expert data analysis and professional genealogist. Prioritize fidelity to the information below; dry recitation, avoid editorialization. Process the data sentence-by-sentence, from beginning to end. Extract this structured data: “Name”, “Relationship”, “Event Year and Location Baptism”, “Event Year and Location Marriage”, “Event Year and Location Children”, “Event Year and Location Death”. The response should have the header row in line 1: “Data From:”, “Name”, “Relationship”, “Baptism” “Marriage”, “Children Name & Birth Year”, “Death”. Column A should have the header row: “Ancestry.com With AI”, “Ancestry.com Without AI”, “FamilySearch About”, “FamilySearch Source & Detail”, “Family Tree Maker”, “Legacy Family Tree”, “MyHeritage.com”, “RootsMagic”. Enclose all cells or fields in quotation marks; omit, ignore, and avoid commas and other punctuation in the original data in your response in an attempt to keep the CSV error-free. Display dates in military format meaning day month spelled out and not by number and year. Display your response in a code window for easy copy-and-paste.
The results are attached above. I’ve color coded them to denote synch (pale green), gedcom (blue), not my own data (yellow).
Interesting how the diacritical marks are shown by Ancestry, Legacy, MyHeritage, and RootsMagic. FamilyTreeMaker omitted them. The apostrophe before and after August was originally quotation marks. Not sure if that is standardization issues or software/technical limitations.
I was surprised that Ancestry, which has the full location for events, simplifies to only provided county and state. The complete marriage location would be Baileytown, Westchester Township, Porter, Indiana. I wondered why Westchester Township was omitted and discovered I had never entered that in any of my generated trees. I had mis-entered death location as Chesterton Township instead of Chesterton, Westchester Township. This is a nice way to enhance and correct your data. (Chesterton is actually in three townships but the events occurred in Westchester).
All of the sites had the names of children. FamilySearch provided the most information (child’s name and dates). Legacy and FamilyTreeMaker both named all children. Not sure why RootsMagic didn’t specify. And now we know MyHeritage considers six children as “several.” Personally, I’d call that a handful plus!
I can see another use for this when trying to figure out where online public trees vary from yours and what source info (if any) they might have. It’s also a nice clean timeline that takes little effort to create.
Next I decided to take the Excel info, re-enter it into ChatGPT and give the original narrative prompt again. Since every narrative had been slightly different I wondered what the final product with the full information available would be. (I should mention I did the first narrative a few weeks ago in RootsMagic and there were three hallucinations but the rest I did on Wednesday and there were none.) Here is the compiled narrative:
Samuel ‘August’ Samuelson was a pivotal figure in his family lineage, with his life journey documented across multiple genealogical platforms. Born on January 3, 1839, in Stora Haddebo, Västra Harg, Östergötland, Sweden, Samuel was the son of Samuel Howard Erickson and Anna Elisabet ‘Lisa’ Torstensdotter. His baptism, a significant event in his early life, is consistently recorded in these sources, reaffirming the importance of his Swedish origins.
Samuel’s life took a significant turn when he married on February 17, 1871. While the exact location of his marriage varies slightly in records, ranging from Baileytown to Westchester Township in Porter, Indiana, it’s clear that this event marked his transition into family life in the United States.
The couple was blessed with several children, though the records differ in detailing their names and birth years. FamilySearch Source & Detail provides the most comprehensive list, including Johan Victor (1872-1921), John Louis (1873-1919), Alfrida (1874-1886), Ada Emilia (b. 1876), and two sons named Gustav Theodore (the first born in 1877 and died the same year, and the second born in 1879). This detail adds depth to our understanding of Samuel’s role as a father and the legacy he left behind.
Samuel’s life came to an end on January 14, 1908, in Chesterton, Porter, Indiana. The consistency of this date across multiple records emphasizes its accuracy and the end of an era in the Samuelson family history.
Endnotes:
The answer is a definite maybe! Here’s what I did with one of my brick walls and Chat GPT. This story revolves around a stolen identity of John A. Long who served in the Union during the Civil War. After his death someone in Marion, Indiana assumed his identity and received a pension. The scammer resided in the Home for Disabled Veterans there and is buried in their cemetery. Interestingly, the man’s tombstone is for a John A. Long that served in New York. But no man by that name served in the regiment written on the tombstone. I asked ChatGPT for some help in solving this dilemma and here was the results:
All sound ideas but unfortunately, DNA wouldn’t be available as it looks like the man had no children. Supposedly had a wife in Michigan but no woman found with the name he provided on the intake form. Can’t find them in the 1880 US federal census either. I then mentioned there was a connection with the Odd Fellows and the Grand Army of the Republic in Michigan, California, and Indiana and asked AI for some out of the box ideas to find records. Here’s the response:
ChatGPT
Wow, Lori, you’ve really dug deep into this mystery! 🕵️♀️ It’s like you’ve hit a genealogical brick wall made of steel. The Odd Fellows connection and the financial advisor being part of the Grand Army of the Republic are intriguing leads.
Given what you’ve already done, here are some more “out-of-the-box” ideas:
All great ideas. If you’re stuck, try AI. Let me know if you solved your brick wall with their help.
