Thursday, April 16, 2026

Added and Updated MyHeritage Record Collections - Week of 10 to 16 April 2026

 The following Record Collections were ADDED or Updated in the MyHeritage Collections Catalog during the week of  10 to 16 April 2026:

                                       =========================== 

There are 0 ADDED record collections in the list this past week, and MyHeritage now has a total of  7,536 record collections (an increase of 0 collection from last week.  The overall set of MyHeritage collections has 39,284,172,104 records or entries (a decrease of about 171 million entries from last week).  

Did MyHeritage remove records from some collections?  There were no new collections on the list the past two weeks, yet there was a decrease in the total number of records.  

The number of entries in the family tree collections were last updated this week. 

See previous Genea-Musings posts about MyHeritage record collections and features in https://www.geneamusings.com/search/label/MyHeritage.com.

                          =========================================

Disclosure: I receive a complimentary Complete Plan subscription to MyHeritage, and have received other material consideration in past years. I uploaded my autosomal DNA raw data to their DNA product. This does not affect my objective analysis of MyHeritage products. I am a paid subscriber to Family Tree Webinars and love it.

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/04/added-and-updated-myheritage-record_074353108.html

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.

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The Golden Shore -- A Schaffner Family Story: Parts 3 and 4

After writing ABC Biography of Frederick Schaffner (1828-1899) Family of Germany, New York and San Francisco, based on my genealogical research, I asked Anthropic Claude to tell the family story of the Schaffner's migrating from New York City to San Francisco by sea. 

The first part of the story was posted in The Golden Shore -- A Schaffner Family Story: Parts 1 and 2.  Here is the second part of the story:

(Infographic created by Google NotebookLM - Parts 3 and 4 of The Golden Shore)


The Golden Shore
A Story of the Schaffner Family

New York to San Francisco, 1855


Part Three

Aspinwall

The Caribbean coast of Panama, late June 1855

They saw the coast of Panama before they smelled it, which surprised Frederick, who had been warned by everyone on the ship that the isthmus had a smell that announced itself for miles. But it was the green that hit him first — a green so violent and absolute that it looked unreal, like a painted backdrop, the jungle rising from the water's edge in an unbroken wall of extravagance.

Then the smell arrived. It was the smell of things growing and rotting simultaneously, of standing water and enormous flowers and soil so alive it was almost moving, and underneath all of it something Frederick could only describe as heat made visible. The air was a physical substance. You didn't breathe it so much as wade through it.

Herman, standing at the rail as the Illinois nosed into the harbor at Aspinwall, said: "It smells like the greengrocer."

"Much bigger greengrocer," Frederick said.

Aspinwall was chaos with a harbor. It sat on a coral island barely above the waterline, connected to the mainland by a causeway, and its streets were a confusion of wooden buildings, tents, warehouses, and a permanent population of several thousand mixed with the transient population of however many passengers happened to be passing through at any given moment — which in June of 1855 was a very great many. Californians going east, easterners going west, Panamanian boatmen and provisioners and luggage handlers and a small army of men whose precise profession was unclear but who seemed to involve themselves in any transaction that might yield a commission.

The moment the Illinois anchored, these men were alongside in canoes, shouting up to the passengers in a mixture of Spanish and English, offering to carry baggage, sell food, change money, provide accommodations, guide them to the railroad station. The noise was extraordinary.

"Hold Herman's hand," Frederick said to Martha Matilda, unnecessarily — she had already gripped the boy's wrist with the efficiency of a woman who had grown up with six brothers.

"What do we do?" she asked.

"We follow the crowd," Frederick said, "and we trust nothing that costs more than it should."

— ★ —

The Panama Railroad station was a low wooden building at the edge of town, and in front of it there was a crowd of several hundred people all attempting to accomplish the same thing at the same time, which created a bottleneck of impressive proportions. Frederick stood in the queue for ninety minutes in the noon heat, with Herman on his shoulders for the last forty of them because the boy's legs had given out, and sweated through his shirt twice over.

The agent behind the window was a thin American with a moustache and the expression of a man who had explained the same things to the same kinds of people eleven thousand times.

"Two adults, one child," Frederick said, in his careful English. "To Panama City."

"Twenty-five dollars the two adults. Child rides free under six." The agent looked at Herman with professional suspicion. "How old?"

"Four," Frederick said.

"He's big for four."

"He is," Frederick agreed.

A pause. The agent stamped three tickets. Frederick paid. The tickets were printed on yellow card and Herman immediately tried to eat his.

— ★ —

They spent one night in Aspinwall, in a boarding house on the main street run by a Panamanian woman named Señora Reyes who spoke five languages with equal authority and charged prices that reflected this. The room was small and very hot and had a window that looked into the side of another building, and from somewhere in the city there was music all night — a guitar and a drum and a man singing in Spanish — and Frederick lay awake listening to it while Martha Matilda slept with her arm around Herman and the ceiling fan turned overhead in slow, hypnotic circles.

He thought about Darmstadt. He did this sometimes, involuntarily, the city surfacing in his mind like something released from the bottom of a lake. The linden trees on the Luisenplatz. The smell of the bakery near the house where he'd grown up. His mother's hands. He had left all of that when he was twenty. He had left New York now. He seemed to be a man constitutionally incapable of staying in one place.

Or perhaps, he thought, looking at the slow fan, he was simply a man who kept moving toward something he hadn't found yet.

He thought California might be it. He was not certain. But a man who waited for certainty never left his room.

He closed his eyes. The guitar played on.


Part Four

The Railroad

The Panama Railroad, July 1855

The train left at six in the morning, before the worst of the heat, and it was the most remarkable thing Frederick had ever been on. He had ridden trains in Germany and in America, and they had been fine machines — purposeful, impressive in their way — but this was something different. This was a train that had been built across forty-seven miles of jungle and swamp and river and mountain, completed just six months before, at a cost the newspapers said was two hundred and ninety-five lives per mile of track, and every one of those miles was visible as the jungle pressed against the windows on both sides and the locomotive fought the grade with a noise like sustained argument.

They had a bench seat near the middle of the car. Martha Matilda sat by the window. Herman sat on Frederick's lap for approximately four minutes and then demanded to move to the window seat beside his mother, which she allowed, and then he pressed his face against the glass for the entire journey with the focused attention of a scientist.

"Affe!" he suddenly shouted. Monkey.

Several passengers looked over. Martha Matilda peered through the glass. Sure enough, in a tree perhaps twenty feet from the tracks, a small monkey sat regarding the passing train with philosophical calm. Then another. Then a whole colony of them, high in the canopy, invisible until they moved.

"Monkeys," Herman announced to the car in general, in case anyone had missed them.

Frau Bauer, who had the seat across the aisle, laughed her deep, generous laugh. The O'Brien children, several rows back, craned their necks. The thin American who had sold them their tickets — he was on the train too, apparently, commuting in some official capacity — looked up from his newspaper with the expression of a man who had seen a thousand monkeys and did not find them remarkable, then looked back at Herman's face against the glass and something in his expression shifted slightly, just for a moment, before the newspaper came back up.

— ★ —

The jungle gave way twice to rivers — wide, brown, slow-moving rivers that the train crossed on iron bridges that vibrated with a deep metallic singing. Each bridge crossing brought a collective hush from the passengers, as though by silent agreement everyone had decided to concentrate very hard on the fact that the bridge was holding.

It held.

In the middle section of the crossing, the train climbed into hills and for a few minutes the jungle thinned and they could see — briefly, before the trees closed in again — an enormous green distance: valley after valley folding away south and west, the Pacific somewhere beyond. Frederick craned his neck to see it and caught a sliver of something flat and silver at the horizon before the jungle swallowed the view again.

"Was that the ocean?" Martha Matilda asked.

"I think so."

She was quiet for a moment, looking at where it had been. "We're more than halfway, then."

"We're more than halfway," Frederick agreed.

She nodded, once, in her way, and turned back to making sure Herman didn't fall off the seat.

— ★ —

They arrived in Panama City at half past ten in the morning, four and a half hours after departing Aspinwall. The Pacific ocean was in front of them, silver and vast, and there was a wind off it that was the most welcome thing Frederick had felt in days — cool, clean, tasting of nothing but salt and distance.

Herman stood on the platform with his head tilted back and his arms slightly out from his sides, like a small figure attempting balance on a moving deck, though the platform was perfectly still. The wind flattened his hair. He was looking at the ocean.

"That's our ocean now," Frederick told him.

"Our ocean?"

"The one we cross next. The Pacific."

Herman turned to look at him. He had a smear of something on his cheek — chocolate, possibly, from a piece Frau Bauer had pressed into his hand as they boarded. His eyes were very dark and very serious.

"How many oceans are there?" he asked.

Frederick thought about it. "Five," he said. "We'll have crossed two."

"Have you crossed the others?"

"No."

"Maybe we will," Herman said, and turned back to look at the water with an expression of open and uncomplicated ambition that made Frederick want to laugh and put his arm around the boy's shoulders at the same time. He did both.


A work of historical fiction

Characters based on the real Schaffner family of San Francisco.

All dialogue and scenes are imagined.


===============================

The AI Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this story is in:

This is historical fiction based on known events in the lives of my ancestors - it might have been this way. The family mentioned is my wife's ancestral family (Frederick Schaffner is her 2nd great-grandfather), and I have significant information about their lives from the available records, but know nothing about their day-to-day lives.

After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit the Schaffner family in New York and San Francisco and witness their daily lives.  I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.

Information like this is very helpful to add historical events and social history content to a person's biography. 

==============================================

Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page.  Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver


Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Today is Genea-Musings 20th Blogiversary! Celebrate with Me!!!

 It's Genea-Musings' 20th Blogiversary

Yep, I started writing Genea-Musings on Tax Day, 2006!   I've been so busy, I almost forgot about it!  Genea-Musings is not a teenager any more!  Do I have to act liek an adult now?

(AI ChatGPT image -- Randy working at Genea-Musings)

Some more statistics:

  • 240 Months of writing about my genealogy and family history journey.
  • 1,043 Weeks of posting about transcriptions, obituaries, news, photographs, education, records, gravestones, providers, ancestors, relatives, societies, bloggers, etc.  
  • 7,304 Days of thinking about what my readers want to know about, what I can provide based on my experience and enthusiasm, and what I want to share about my ancestry.
  • 19,265 Blog Posts - an average of 2.64 posts per day, 18.47 posts per week, 80.3 posts per month, 963.2 posts per year.  

                                         (AI NotebookLM Infographic -- Genea-Musings at 20)

Some reflections:

1)  It seems like just yesterday that I started my Randy's Musings blog - here is the first post on 15 April 2006. I explained the name change to Genea-Musings in my first anniversary post on 15 April 2007. In my two-year anniversary post, I showed a screen shot of the early blog page. 

2)  After 20 years of Randy's Musings and Genea-Musings, this is post number 19,265.   In the past year, I've written 1,167 posts, or 3.20 posts per day (that is a little higher than last year, 2.76. I think that the most in a year was 1,128 in 2025, and the most posts in one day was 8, but I've had some days with zero posts (usually when on vacation or in the hospital).

3)  I find it mind-boggling that I have written:
That totals about 60% of the total number of blog posts.

For reference purposes, 521 weeks is 10 years, and 1,043 weeks is 20 years!

4)  Over the 20 years, over 95% of the posts have been original content that I have written, edited and posted about my own research, experience and education.  

5)  My Blogger statistics from Google indicate that I have had over 33 million page views in the 20 years.  Currently, I average about 890,000 page views per month, or about 29,300 per day.  It's also 1,750
views per post on average (ranging from tens to thousands). These statistics may be significantly bloated by bots that crawl or view but don't read for some reason. I should set up a Google Analytics account.

5)  In addition,  about 3,000 persons subscribe via RSS using Feedly.  I don't have a count for other feeds, blog readers and  Facebook  readers. About 300 readers on Substack receive a post in an email each day.  If I had to guess, I would say that about 3,000 persons read part of Genea-Musings on an average day. I post links to my posts on Facebook and SubStack.  A significant number of the readers (probably over 30%) visit the actual website come via Facebook or a search engine.

Please permit me to genea-muse for a bit here (it's a given, isn't it?):

1)  I really appreciate the Genea-bloggers Tribe community and all of my Genea-Musings readers. Without all of you, we would not have as much genealogy information (news, research experiences, family history, photographs, etc.) online. Blogging and social networking has brought democratization to the world of genealogy writing - anybody can do it (and many do it very well) and the genealogy community has more information, provided faster and more up-to-date, than it ever has had before.

2)  The Genea-Bloggers community is overwhelmingly friendly and supportive of each other and their readers.  There is very little overt competition, back-biting or flame wars.  This reflects the genealogy community as a whole, I believe, and almost everyone I know believes, in and works at collaborating with, educating, and helping others from the most famous (e.g., the genea-rock stars like Elizabeth Mills, Tom Jones, Judy Russell, Blaine Bettinger, etc.) to the beginners (new society members, new blog readers, etc.).

3)  The Genea-Bloggers community as a whole has garnered the respect of the genealogy industry - the record provider companies, the software companies, website owners, and genealogical societies.  We have been treated and recognized as legitimate media outlets for the genealogy community.  They understand that genealogy blogs are a significant way to announce and publicize their products or services, and to create genea-buzz at conferences.  This could not happen without the commitment of genea-bloggers to objectivity and collaboration.  Not to mention time, energy and lifelong learning.

4)  I'm really proud to be a member of the Genea-Bloggers community and to enjoy the camaraderie online and in person.  At a genealogy conference or seminar, genea-bloggers tend to flock together - it's an instant brother/sisterhood - many of us read and comment on each other's blogs.  Facebook and other social media sites have enabled us to "know," rejoice, or commiserate with the life and research experiences of our colleagues.  I love seeing my friends and colleagues at society meetings, seminars and conferences.  Because of Linda's medical and mobility problems, we will not be able to go together to another conference.

5)  Why am I still writing genealogy blog posts?  Because I can.  Because it really helps me advance my own research.  Because my research is unfinished. Because something I write may help other researchers as cousin bait, or as an example, or as a demonstration.  Because I want to.  Because it's therapy for me.  Because it's fun!!!

6) Life is good in the genea-cave, surrounded by books, notebooks, papers, and photographs. It's even better when family history is made with our daughters and our five grandchildren (now 22, 21, 20, 17 and 11).

7)  Lastly, thank you to my faithful readers. I appreciate your feedback to my posts and learn a lot from the collected wisdom and experience of my readers and blog-peers.  

8)  Can I take the rest of the week off?  Probably not.   A new week starts today and I look forward to writing about 22 posts this next week.   I will likely work on several blog posts and my RootsMagic family tree today before watching the Padres game tonight.

9)  I love AI Google NotebookLM -- here is the Video Overview that it created based on this blog post:


================================

The URL for this post is:  

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

 

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Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 9 to 15 April 2026

 Welcome to Genealogy Education Bytes, posted on Wednesday afternoon for the past week, where we try to highlight some of the most important genealogy and family history education items that came across my desktop since the last issue.




1) Upcoming Conferences and Institutes

* Conference Keeper Calendar - has many links to register for and/or view seminars, conferences and institutes.

* Root Cellar Spring Seminar, featuring Drew Smith, MA, MS, MS ($$, In-person, in Sacramento California) - 18 April 2026.

* MGC Spring Seminar 2026: Branches & Bytes: Exploring AI in Genealogy with Steve Little and Mark Thompson ($$, In-person, in Kansas City, Missouri) - 18 April 2026.

* 'Navigating the Future' - Guild of One-Name Studies Conference 2026 ($$, In-person, Portsmouth, England) - 24 to 26 April 2026.

* National Genealogical Society 2026 Family History Conference ($$, In-person and virtual, in Fort Wayne, Indiana) - 27 to 30 May 2026.

2 ) Upcoming Webinars and Online Classes (times are US Pacific):

* Conference Keeper Calendar - has many links to register for and/or view seminars, webinars and classes.

* FamilySearch MonthlyWebinars (Free)

* RootsTech 2019-2026 On-Demand Sessions (Free)

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar -- Wednesday, 15 April, 11 a.m.: DNA in Action 2 of 6: Writing Proofs including DNA by Karen Stanbary.

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar -- Wednesday, 15 April, 5 p.m.: From Research to Data with AI 4 of 5: Seeing Patterns—Summaries, Timelines, and Clusters by Andrew Redfern.

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar -- Friday, 17 April, 11 a.m.: Researching Métis Ancestors: Origins, Scrip, and Red River Records by Christine Woodcock.

*  Legacy Family Tree Webinar --  Tuesday, 21 April, 5 p.m.: What's in a Name? Finding Your Norwegian Ancestors by Christina Gow Clever.

*  Legacy Family Tree Webinar --  Wednesday, 22 April, 11 a.m.: Fields of Hope: African Americans, Immigrants, and Women in the Homesteading Era by Angela Packer McGhie.

*  Legacy Family Tree Webinar --  Wednesday, 22 April, 5 p.m.: From Research to Data with AI 5 of 5: Your AI Research Assistant—Logs, Notes, and Citations by Andrew Redfern.

*  Legacy Family Tree Webinar --   Friday, 24 April, 11 a.m.: Essential Skills for New Genealogists 2 of 12: Vital Records—Records of Hatchings, Matchings & Dispatchings by Dave McDonald.
3) Recent Podcasts:

* Ancestors and Algorithms:  Ep. 33: FAN Club Method + AI - Find Ancestors Through Their Neighbors


* Family Tree Talk:  The perseverance in family history

4) Recent YouTube Videos

*  Allen County Public Library:  A Guide to Württemberg Emigration Records
*  Allen County Public Library:  Exploring Family History in Rhode Island
*  Allen County Public Library:  Learning Your Family History






*  DearMYRTLE's Archive:  Mondays with Myrt - 13 April 2026

* Denyse Allen - Chronicle Makers:  Genealogy AI Showdown: Claude vs ChatGPT vs Gemini
 







*  GeneaBloggers:  2026 Geneabloggers Annual Meeting


*  Int'l Institute of Genealogical Studies:  Planning a Research Trip to Scotland

* Italian Roots and Genealogy:  Who Were My Italian Ancestors? I Finally Found Out

* Randy Seaver, Geneaholic:  Emily and Lyle's Story: The Dance



* Trace Your New England Roots:   The Impossible Bond Between Metacomet And Hugh Cole
* Trace Your New England Roots:  Maine Genealogy Brick Wall? These Records Never Fail

*  Write Your Family History With Devon Noel Lee:  I Thought I Knew How to Write My Family History—Until ChatGPT Asked This


5) Did you miss the last post in this series -- Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 2 to 8 April 2026?

Read past Genealogy Education Bytes here.

==============================================

NOTE: If I missed an upcoming conference or webinar, or a useful podcast or video, in this time period, please let me know in a comment or an email.

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/04/genealogy-education-bytes-week-of-9-to.html

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share your comment on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com. Note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately.

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Life Memoir of Maria (Beamish) Paul (1827-1909) in San Francisco in 1907

 I wrote an AI-assisted ABC biography for the family of my my wife's 2nd great-grandparents John Charles and Maria T. (Beamish) Paul in ABC Biography of John Charles and Maria (Beamish) Paul of Ireland and San Francisco, based on my genealogical research over 38 years. 

I wondered what Maria (Beamish) Paul might have told her grandchildren in a life memoir in late 1907. 




(AI Google NotebookLM Infographic for Maria Paul's life memoir)

1)  I requested Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 to   "Please write a life memoir for Maria (Beamish) Paul based on the attached biography, as she might tell to her grandchildren in 1907."

2)  The AI Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 memoir (edited for accuracy and completeness) is: 


In My Own Words
The Life of Maria Paul
née Beamish

As told to her grandchildren, San Francisco, 1907


"We came such a long way, children. But I would do it all again."

Come, Sit Beside Me

Now then, come close, all of you, and stop your fidgeting. Pull your chairs up to mine and let the fire do its work. Yes, you too, little one — there is room on the footstool. I am an old woman now, eighty years come August, and my bones have earned the right to sit near a warm hearth. But I have enough breath left in me, God willing, to tell you something of where I came from and how I came to be sitting in this very chair, in this city, in California of all the improbable places in the world.

Your mother and your aunt Rebecca have heard bits of this story, here and there, over the years. But I never told it all at once, not from the beginning. So tonight I will try. You must promise me one thing, though — you must remember it. Write it down someday if you can. A family that forgets where it came from is like a ship that has lost its anchor. It drifts, and it does not know why.

Ireland: The Country I Carry Inside Me

I was born on the twenty-seventh of August, in the year 1827, in County Cork, Ireland. I will not pretend I remember it clearly — one does not remember being an infant — but I carry Ireland inside me the way you carry the smell of your mother's kitchen long after you have left home. It is a green country, they say, greener than anything you will ever see in California, and the sky is a particular shade of grey that has no equal in all the world. My father was Thomas Beamish and my mother was Catherine, and beyond that I will not tell you much, because there is not much I know with certainty, and I will not invent what I cannot remember.

What I do know is this: Ireland in those years was in terrible trouble. The potato, which was the food that kept half the country alive, began to fail in the autumn of 1845, when I was eighteen years old. What followed was a catastrophe beyond anything I have words for, even now. People starved — truly starved, children and grandmothers alike — and others died of the fevers that follow hunger as surely as night follows day. A million souls, they say, perished in those years. Another million left on the emigrant ships. I was among those who left. I had to go. Ireland as I had known it was dying, and I was young and strong and I wanted to live.

The crossing to America was not pleasant. I was a young woman traveling alone, which was not so uncommon as you might think — we Irish girls learned early how to look after ourselves. The ship was crowded and the sea was rough and the smell below decks was something I prefer not to dwell upon. But I arrived. I arrived in one piece with my health and my wits about me, and that was more than many could say.

New Bedford, Massachusetts: Where I Found My Footing

I made my way to New Bedford, in Massachusetts, which was at that time one of the great cities of the world — or so it felt to a young Irish girl who had never seen anything larger than a market town. New Bedford was the whaling capital of the earth. The harbor was full of ships, tall-masted and magnificent, and the smell of whale oil hung over everything like a permanent fog. It was a busy, prosperous, noisy place, full of sailors and merchants and people from every corner of the globe.

I found work in the household of a respectable family, as many Irish girls did. It was honest work and it kept a roof over my head and food in my belly, which was all I asked of life in those early years. I learned the ways of an American household — the stoves, the marketing, the laundry, the particular standards that New England women kept. I learned to speak without quite so much of Ireland in my voice, though it never left entirely. Your grandfather used to say he could always hear County Cork in me when I was angry, and perhaps he was right.

It was in New Bedford that I met John Paul. He was a Newfoundlander — which is almost the same as being Irish, I always thought, because half of Newfoundland was Irish to begin with. He was a cooper by trade, a maker of barrels, and he had strong hands and a quiet manner and dark eyes that I found very difficult to look away from. We were married on the twenty-ninth of April, 1852, in a Roman Catholic ceremony. Father McNulty performed the rite. I was twenty-four years old. I wore my good dress and carried flowers that a neighbor had cut from her garden, and I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.

Our Early Years Together

Mary Ann was born to us in November of 1854, our first child, and such a joy she was. I had feared, as young mothers do, that I would not know what to do with a baby — but it turns out that babies are rather instructive on the subject. They make their needs quite clear. Rebecca came along in November of 1856, and by then John had decided that New Bedford, wonderful as it was, was not where our fortune lay. The country was moving westward. Every newspaper you picked up in those years spoke of nothing but the West — the railroads being built, the land being settled, the opportunities waiting for a working man with a strong back and an ambitious heart.

So we moved to Chicago, Illinois, in about 1856. Chicago was something altogether different from New Bedford — flat as a tabletop and loud as a thunderstorm, sitting on the edge of that great lake which is so large you cannot see the other shore and might mistake it for the sea. The city was growing so fast you could practically hear the hammering day and night. John found work there, and we made our home in the eighth ward. It was a decent neighborhood, working people mostly, Irish and Germans and a scattering of everyone else.

Two more children were born to us in Chicago. Little Robert came in 1859 — and I must tell you about Robert, because I will not skip over him simply because his story was short. He was a beautiful boy, with his father's eyes and my stubborn chin, and he died before he was five years old. In those years you expected to lose children. Everyone did. But expecting it does not make it easier. You carry them with you, the ones you lose. I carry Robert still.

Abbie was born in September of 1861, our third daughter and a fierce little creature from the first day. By the time she arrived, the country had gone to war with itself — the great Civil War that tore America in half. John was too old to be taken as a soldier, and for that I thanked God every morning. We watched the headlines and prayed for it to end, and it did end, but at a cost that still makes me grieve when I think of it.

The Long Journey West: Chicago to San Francisco

It was in 1862 that John made up his mind that California was where we were bound. The Gold Rush had happened more than ten years before, but San Francisco was still drawing people by the thousands, and John said that a man who could work hard could make something of himself there. I will not say I was entirely enthusiastic about the idea. I had only just got Chicago arranged to my liking, and now we were to uproot ourselves again. But I had followed John from New Bedford to Chicago and I was not going to stop trusting him now. So I packed what we had and we set off.

Now, children, I want you to understand that in 1862 there was no railroad all the way to California. That would not come until 1869. So the journey west was a considerable undertaking. We went by train from Chicago south through Illinois and on down through the heart of the country, all the way to New Orleans, in Louisiana. That train journey alone took the better part of several days, and with young children it felt longer still. The railway cars were not luxurious — hard wooden benches, coal smoke, and the constant rocking and screeching of the wheels. We ate what we had brought with us and watched the landscape change outside the window, from the flat prairies of Illinois to the great wooded lowlands of the South.

New Orleans was like nothing I had ever seen. I had not expected it to feel so foreign — so French and Spanish and African all at once, the language a mixture I could barely follow, the food full of spices that made my eyes water, and the heat, even in what they told us was a mild season, heavier and wetter than anything I had known in Ireland or Massachusetts. We were there only long enough to arrange our passage on the ship. I did not see much of the city except the port, but what I saw I have never forgotten.

We sailed from New Orleans across the Gulf of Mexico to Panama. In those days you crossed the isthmus of Panama by a combination of boat and rail — the Panama Railroad had been completed just a few years before, and it was the fastest route to the Pacific. The crossing took perhaps a day, but it was a day spent in stifling jungle heat, with the air thick and green around you and strange birds screaming in the trees. I kept Mary Ann and Rebecca close beside me and held Abbie on my lap and tried not to think about the stories one heard of yellow fever and cholera along that route. We arrived safely on the other side, which I considered a minor miracle and thanked the Virgin Mary for.

Then we boarded a ship on the Pacific side and sailed north up the coast of Central America and Mexico and on up to San Francisco. The Pacific, despite its name, was not always pacific — we had some rough days at sea that had me wishing I had never left County Cork. But when we came through the Golden Gate — that great gap in the hills where the bay opens out before you — it was one of the finest sights I have ever seen in my life. The city was spread across the hills like something from a story, white and gleaming in the afternoon sun, and I thought: yes. Yes, this is where we are going to make our home.

San Francisco: Our Home at Last

We settled first on Green Street, and then moved several times over the years as the family grew and circumstances changed. John worked hard — as a cooper when he could find that work, as a laborer, as a janitor and watchman in his later years. It was not the life of ease that the dreamers imagined when they set off for California, but it was a real life, with a real roof over our heads and real food on the table, and I did not complain. We were not alone — the city was full of Irish families in much the same situation, and we looked after one another.

Robert Henry was born to us in about 1864, and then the twins — Thomas and John — came along in December of 1868, which was a surprise that I received with somewhat mixed feelings, I must confess, at the age of forty-one. Seven children in all. We raised them in this city, on these steep streets, and I watched them grow into their own people with a mother's particular mixture of pride and alarm.

John — your grandfather — died in May of 1879. He was fifty-five years old and the dropsy had taken hold of him, which is to say his heart and his body wore out before his spirit did. He died at Clara Street and we buried him at Mount Calvary Cemetery, where I will go to join him in God's good time. I was fifty-one when I lost him. We had been married twenty-seven years. I will not try to tell you what it is to lose a husband of twenty-seven years because I do not have the words and you, please God, will not need to know for a very long while yet.

The Children I Have Loved and Lost

Your grandmother has outlived children, and that is a grief that does not diminish with time. My little Robert died in Chicago before we even came to California. Then John Junior — my youngest boy, the twin — died in September of 1889, only twenty years old. He had his whole life in front of him. Abbie, my fierce, funny Abbie, died in November of 1894 at thirty-three. And Robert Henry, who sailed away to Mexico on some business of his own, died there in Acapulco in 1902.

I do not tell you these things to make you sad, but because they are true, and the truth of a family includes its sorrows as well as its joys. I have had both in good measure. Your mother Mary Ann and your aunt Rebecca are still here, and Thomas, and their children — you — and that is a richness that I am grateful for every single day I open my eyes.

The Earthquake: The City That Shook and Rose Again

Now I must tell you about last year, about the eighteenth of April, 1906, because you are old enough to remember some of it yourselves, and you should hear it told plainly.

I was at Natoma Street when it happened. It was just past five o'clock in the morning and I was not yet properly awake — at my age sleep is not always easy and I had been lying half-dozing when the world came apart. The shaking began suddenly and violently, not like the little tremors we sometimes feel here — this was a roar from deep in the earth, as though the ground itself had lost its temper. The walls cracked, the plaster fell, the windows shattered. I held on to the bedframe and prayed, because there was nothing else to do.

It lasted less than a minute, they say, though it felt like an eternity. When it stopped I got up — my heart hammering fit to burst — and looked out at what remained. The street was full of people in their nightclothes, all of us looking at one another with the same wild expression. Then we smelled the smoke. The fires had started almost immediately, fed by broken gas lines and fallen stoves, and with the water mains ruptured there was almost nothing to be done about them. For three days the city burned.

I watched the smoke rising from a dozen directions at once. I watched people loading their belongings onto wagons and baby carriages and their own backs and walking out through the streets with that particular blank look that disaster puts on human faces. The soldiers came and dynamited whole blocks to try to make firebreaks — the explosions going off one after another through the night, a sound I pray I never hear again. Mary Ann came and found me on the first day and took me to stay with her family, and I was grateful for that. I was seventy-eight years old and not as steady on my feet as I once was.

When it was over, a great portion of this city we had come so far to reach lay in ruins. Three thousand people dead. Hundreds of thousands without homes. I thought of the ship coming through the Golden Gate forty-four years before, and the white gleaming city spread across the hills, and I wept — not just for what was lost, but for all the people who had built it, most of them immigrants like us, who had come here with nothing and made something from it.

But then, children — and this is what I want you to remember — San Francisco got back up. Within months the hammering had started again. The streets were clearing, the rebuilding was underway, and people who had lost everything were already making plans. I have lived long enough to have seen great hardship in my time, and I will tell you this: the measure of a people is not whether they are struck down, but whether they rise. This city rose. I am proud of it.

What I Would Have You Remember

So that is the story, or most of it. A girl from Ireland who crossed the ocean alone at the age of about twenty-three, who found a good man in New Bedford and followed him to Chicago and then took a train to New Orleans and a ship through Panama and arrived in this city on the edge of the world and called it home. It is not so remarkable a story, really — there were thousands of us, hundreds of thousands, all doing much the same thing. But it is my story, and it is yours too, because you would not be sitting here in front of this fire if it had not unfolded exactly as it did.

Ireland is inside me still, and Newfoundland is inside you through your grandfather, and New Bedford and Chicago are in there too somewhere. All those places made us. Do not be in too great a hurry to forget them.

Now then. It is getting late and I am tired, and I believe I can hear your mother in the kitchen, which means supper will not be long. Come and give your old grandmother a kiss. Every one of you. Yes, even you, Paul — you are never too old to kiss your grandmother, whatever you may think.

God bless you all. Every one.

— Maria Paul, née Beamish
San Francisco, California, 1907

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3)  The Video Overview of Maria Paul's life memoir, created by the Google NotebookLM AI tool, is:   

4)  I edited the Claude memoir text to correct minor inconsistencies and errors. Every large language model (LLM) AI tool writes descriptive text much better than I can write. The AI tools are very perceptive, insightful and inspiring, creating engaging text in seconds, including local and national historical events and social history detail when requested.

5)  This is historical fiction, based on my own genealogical research. It is what Maria (Beamish) Paul might have told her grandchildren in 1907.  

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Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

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