Monday, May 18, 2026

Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 17 May 2026

 Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 17 May 2026). 

1)  Hosted and moderated the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (CVGS) Research Group Meeting on Wednesday.  We discussed MyHeritage's Family infographics and Tribute Reel features, the 1926 Irish census, new Terms of Service on Ancestry and MyHeritage, several Family Tree Magazine articles, two new book offerings, the Library of Congress, SDGS education classes, and a review of FamilySearch features.

2)  Attended the San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) British Isles Group with Colin Whitney and the AI for Genealogy Group with Doug Shaw on Saturdays.

3)  Was a panelist on Mondays With Myrt on Monday.  We discussed the 1926 Irish census, Robin Stewart and Internet Archive, Barbra Tien and Stories250, and the MyHeritage new features.

4)  Curated genealogy-related articles to keep myself and my readers updated on the genealogy world in:

5)  Transcribed a land deed for John Underhill with help from FamilySearch Full-Text Search in Amanuensis Monday -- 1784 Deed of John Underhill and John Underhill Jr. Buying Land in Rockingham County, New Hampshire From Peter Wells.

6)  Wrote one ABC Biography and one Life Memoir, and posted them on Genea-Musings and   Substack:
7)  Requested free AI tools to tell me about these genealogy and family history subjects, and posted them on Genea-Musings and Substack: 

8)  Wrote an AI-assisted short story about my parents lives and romance on Genea-Musings and Substack:
9)  Wrote an AI-assisted short story about my grandparents lives and romance on Genea-Musings and Substack:
10)  Updated my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Added a number of the recent Google NotebookLM Videos and Slide Shows to my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@RandySeaver. 

11)  Searched for more records of ancestral families on Ancestry, FamilySearch and MyHeritage, downloaded record images to my digital file folders, and added research notes, events and sources to RootsMagic profiles.  My RootsMagic family tree now has 75,048 profiles (up 0 from last week)  and 148,023 source citations (up 1).  

12)  My AncestryDNA test now has 51,823 DNA matches (up 30 from 10 May) with 2,195 "close" matches (20 cM or more) today (up 1), with no new ThruLines.  Added Notes to no Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic. MyHeritageDNA test now has 14,460 DNA matches (up 18 from 10 May) for me. 

13) Wrote 21 Genea-Musings blog posts last week (Sunday through Saturday), of which one was a press release. The most viewed post last week was Betty and Fred's Story: Building a Life Together -- December 1943 with  over 385 views.  Genea-Musings had about 463,000 page views last week and over 2,688,000 views over the past month (lots of bots I think). 

14)  Real life events:  Visited Linda several days this past week at her memory care facility.  Went to the grocery store on Monday and Friday. Finished reading The Waiting by Michael Connelly and started . Woman of God by James Patterson. Watched the Padres games - they were 4-2 this past week and are 28-18 on the season.  

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

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.  Please note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. 

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ask AI: "Describe the Life Of the Devier Smith Family in 1886 in McCook, Nebraska"

  I wondered if my AI Assistant Anthropic Claude could provide me with information about an ancestral family's life in 1886 in McCook, Nrbraska.  My 3rd2nd great-grandparents Devier J. Smith (1839-1894) and Abigail (Vaux) Smith (1844-1931) had moved to McCook in 1885 with their three young adult children. a farm in Sandy Creek Township in Mercer County.  I posted an ABC Biography for Devier Smith in ABC Biography of #26 Devier James Lamphier Smith (1839-1894) of New York, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.

(AI NotebookLM Infographic -- Devier Smith Family Life in 1886 in Nebraska)

I asked Anthropic Claude to create a description of the Devier Smith family life and work in McCook, Nebraska in 1886, based on the biography and social history.

The Claude Sonnet 4.6 response was:


Portrait Of the Devier Smith Family in McCook, Nebraska — 1886

The Family Situation

McCook, Nebraska in 1886 was barely four years old as a town, and the Smiths were among its early settlers, having arrived in 1885. For Devier, now age 47, this was at least the sixth major move of his life — from New York to Wisconsin to Iowa to Missouri to Kansas and now Nebraska. He had the seasoned, practical outlook of a man who had reinvented himself many times over, and who understood that opportunity rarely announced itself politely. You went to find it.

Abbie, his wife of 25 years, was the steady center of the household. She had followed Devier across five states, buried two children, and built a home in each new place with whatever materials were at hand — socially as much as literally. By 1886 she was in her early forties, an experienced frontier woman who had long since learned to make community wherever she landed. Her millinery work was not merely economic necessity; it was also her thread of connection to the women of McCook, a way of being known and trusted in a town full of strangers.

Daughter Della, age 24 in 1886, was living in the household, helping herm other with household duties and teaching music. She was one year away from her marriage to Henry Austin Carringer in 1887, and one imagines her as a young woman with some social standing in McCook — a music teacher was a figure of some refinement in a prairie town, sought after by families who wanted their daughters to have accomplishments. She would eventually settle in San Diego, California, living to 1944, and the long arc of her life suggests a woman of adaptability and resilience very much in the family mold.

Matie, age 20 in 1886, also helped with household work and was the livelier of the two sisters if her later biography is any indication — she would marry three times, suggesting a woman of strong personality and perhaps restless energy. As a music teacher alongside her sister, she would have been part of the same social world, moving between the parlors of McCook's more established families, giving lessons and attending the small concerts and recitals that punctuated frontier social life.

Son Davie, age 22, was already a working partner in the family livery business. He had grown up watching his father operate liveries in Kansas and would have absorbed the trade thoroughly — the care of horses, the management of hired hands, the negotiation with customers, the rhythms of a business tied intimately to the comings and goings of a railroad town. He was a decade away from his first marriage, and in 1886 was likely a familiar figure on McCook's main streets, a young man known by name to most of the town's residents.

The shadow of loss lay quietly over all of them. Little Aggie had died at two in Bedford, Iowa in 1870, and little Lutie had died at two in Kansas in 1878. Both children were buried far from McCook, in the soil of states the family had passed through. In an era before reliable photography was universal, the memories of those children were kept alive largely through the telling — through family stories, through the Bible entries that Devier clearly valued, through the private grief that frontier families carried alongside their public optimism.

The Work

The Blue Front livery stable was the engine of the family's economic life in McCook, and it was well-positioned to thrive right next to the train station and the Platte River. The Burlington & Missouri Railroad had reached McCook in 1882, and by 1886 the town was growing rapidly as a regional hub for southwestern Nebraska. Every train and coach that arrived brought potential customers — traveling salesmen, land speculators, ranchers, settlers, government officials — all of whom needed horses, vehicles, and a place to stable their own animals while they conducted their business in town.

Devier bought land with a house from John Dunbar in 1885, and built a barn and a livery stable. A well-run livery stable in a railroad town of this period was a complex operation. It was part hotel for horses, part transportation rental agency, part repair shop, and part social gathering place. The stable would have offered boarding for horses by the day, week, or month; the hire of horses, buggies, wagons, and carriages by the hour or day; the sale of feed — hay, oats, and corn — to travelers passing through; and likely some basic farriery and harness repair. The smell of a livery stable — horse sweat, leather, manure, hay, and axle grease — was one of the defining scents of any 19th-century American town, and the Blue Front would have been among the most familiar landmarks in McCook.

Son Davie managed the day-to-day operation, which meant early mornings and late evenings. Horses needed feeding and watering twice daily at minimum, stalls needed mucking out, harness needed oiling and checking for wear, and vehicles needed washing and maintenance. There would have been hired hands — stable boys and groomsmen — but in a young business the owner's family was typically the core labor force. Devier, when present, would have worked alongside his son without the slightest self-consciousness about it; he had been a stable hand and livery man, and a farm laborer, before age 21 and had never lost the habit of physical work.

The harness rack patent of December 1885 gives a revealing glimpse into Devier's mind. Patent No. 331,565 was not the invention of a dreamer or a tinkerer for its own sake — it was the practical solution of a working businessman to a specific daily problem. Harness in a livery stable was expensive, heavy, and constantly in use; storing it efficiently, keeping it in good condition, and being able to locate and deploy it quickly were genuine operational challenges. The fact that Devier took the time and expense to patent his solution suggests he saw commercial potential beyond his own stable — perhaps imagining selling the design to other livery operators across the region. Whether that ambition was ever realized the biography does not say, but the instinct was characteristic.

Abbie's millinery work deserves more attention than it sometimes receives in frontier family histories. Millinery in the 1880s was a skilled trade, not a casual hobby. A milliner needed to understand fashion — which meant keeping up with what was being worn in the cities, through fashion plates and trade publications — as well as the practical crafts of sewing, wiring, blocking, and trimming hats in felt, straw, silk, velvet, and ribbon. Abbie would likely have operated from home or from a small shop space, receiving customers by appointment and keeping a stock of materials. Her clientele in McCook would have ranged from the wives of successful merchants and lawyers who wanted fashionable hats, to farm women who needed something serviceable for church. In either case, Abbie's workroom would have been a social space as much as a commercial one — a place where women talked, exchanged news, and built the informal networks that held frontier communities together.

Della and Matie's music teaching operated in a similar social register. Piano lessons in the 1880s were the marker of a family's aspirations for their daughters — a girl who could play was a girl who was being prepared for respectable society. The two Smith sisters would have traveled between households, teaching in the parlors of their students' homes, or received students at the family's own home if they had a suitable instrument. The repertoire of the day leaned heavily on parlor songs, hymns, simplified classical arrangements, and the popular sentimental ballads that defined the era's domestic culture. Teaching music was not lucrative work, but it was respectable, independent, and socially integrating in ways that mattered enormously in a new town.

Devier's habit of finding additional income streams — the hair tonic, the horse and cattle trading, the land speculation — meant that the family's economy was never entirely dependent on any single enterprise. This diversification was not accidental; it was the strategy of a man who had seen enough of frontier life to know that single-crop farming or single-business dependency was a recipe for catastrophe when drought, disease, or economic downturns arrived. In 1886, with the Kansas ranch also generating income and the McCook livery growing, the Smiths were probably in reasonable financial health — comfortable by frontier standards if not wealthy.

The Challenges

The physical environment of southwestern Nebraska in 1886 was demanding in ways that are difficult to fully appreciate today. McCook sits on the Republican River valley at an elevation of about 2,400 feet, in a semi-arid climate that receives barely enough rainfall for reliable agriculture. The summers were hot and dry, with temperatures regularly climbing above 100 degrees, and the winters were savage — blizzards could materialize with little warning, dropping temperatures to dangerous lows and burying roads and livestock in drifts of snow. The great blizzard of January 1888 — the "Schoolchildren's Blizzard" — was still two years away, but every winter on the plains carried its risks.

The year 1886 was, in fact, part of a period of relative prosperity and optimism on the Great Plains — rainfall had been unusually good through the early 1880s, encouraging settlement and lending false confidence to the conviction that the plains could support intensive agriculture. The drought, crop failures, and mass exodus that would devastate the region in the late 1880s and early 1890s were not yet fully apparent, but experienced plainsmen like Devier would have felt the underlying fragility of the situation. Water was always the central anxiety of plains life, and a livery business was only as healthy as the surrounding agricultural economy.

For the family business, the competition for livery trade in a growing town was real. As McCook expanded, other entrepreneurs would have seen the same opportunity Devier had, and maintaining a competitive edge meant constant attention to the quality of horses, vehicles, and service. The railroad also brought disruption as well as custom — as rail service expanded, some of the long-distance hauling that liveries had traditionally supplied began to shift to freight cars, requiring livery operators to adapt their offerings toward shorter local trips and recreational use.

The divided nature of the family was a challenge that the biography captures poignantly but does not dwell on. Devier's Kansas ranch in Cheyenne County was roughly 90 miles southwest of McCook as the crow flies along the Republican River — several days' travel by horse and wagon in 1886, before the ranch area had reliable rail connections. When Devier was at the ranch, he was genuinely remote from his family, and the ranch's isolation — the "not a roof to cover them" quality that he recalled with a mixture of pride and hardship — was real. The Bible entry from 1889 shows a man who felt that distance acutely, finding comfort in scripture when the human comfort of family was unavailable.

Managing two operations in two states simultaneously, with the communication technology of the 1880s — letters that took days to arrive, no telephone, no telegraph except in town centers — required trust, delegation, and a tolerance for uncertainty that most modern businesspeople would find extraordinarily stressful. Devier's reliance on Davie to run the McCook stable in his absence was not just a business arrangement; it was an act of faith in his son.

Health was a constant background concern in an era before antibiotics and modern medicine. The fact that Devier would die of heart disease at 52 in 1894 suggests that the physical demands of his working life — the outdoor labor, the long rides, the irregular meals of a man always in motion — were taking their toll even in 1886. Frontier medicine could do little for cardiovascular disease beyond recommending rest, which was not in Devier's nature to take.

Entertainment and Community Life

McCook in 1886 was determined to be more than a raw frontier outpost. The town had churches, a newspaper, a school, and the social institutions that 19th-century Americans built with remarkable speed wherever they settled, as if culture were as necessary as shelter. For the Smith family, with their musical accomplishments and their participation in fraternal and church life, McCook offered a surprisingly rich social world by the standards of the time.

The Methodist Episcopal church was central to the family's social identity — it was at the M.E. church that Devier's funeral would eventually be held, which tells us that the family were regular and recognized members of that congregation. In a frontier town, church membership was the primary social credential. It determined who you were and what kind of people you associated with. The M.E. church of the 1880s was a socially active institution — not just Sunday services, but prayer meetings, ladies' aid societies, church suppers, revival meetings, and the ongoing charitable work of supporting poorer members of the community. Abbie's millinery connections and Della and Matie's music teaching would both have been intertwined with church life in ways that are hard to separate; the same women who bought hats from Abbie sang in the choir, and the same girls who took piano lessons from Della and Matie performed at church concerts.

The Ancient Order of United Workmen gave Devier a specifically male social world alongside the mixed-gender church community. The A.O.U.W. was one of the largest fraternal organizations in America in the 1880s, with lodges in virtually every town of any size. It offered its members life insurance — a genuine practical benefit in an era when a man's death could leave his family destitute — as well as the rituals, regalia, and fellowship that fraternal orders provided. Lodge meetings were regular social events, and the A.O.U.W. lodge in McCook would have brought together many of the town's working and business-class men in an atmosphere of brotherhood and mutual obligation. For a man like Devier, who had moved so often that his social roots were always shallow, the A.O.U.W. offered instant community — walk into any lodge in any town in America, and you were among brothers.

Music was not merely the Smith daughters' profession — it was the primary form of domestic and community entertainment in the 1880s. Before phonographs, before radio, before any form of recorded or broadcast sound, music meant live performance, and households with musical members were the centers of social life. The Smith home, with two music teachers in residence and a mother whose social connections ran through much of the town, would have been a natural gathering place for the kind of informal parlor musicales that were the entertainment highlight of middle-class frontier life. Neighbors and friends would have gathered in the evening to sing around the piano, to perform the popular songs of the day — Stephen Foster's ballads were still widely beloved, alongside newer parlor favorites — and to enjoy the simple pleasure of communal music-making.

The railroad itself brought entertainment to McCook that would otherwise have been inaccessible. Traveling theatrical companies, lecturers, musical performers, and various kinds of shows moved along the rail lines, stopping in towns large enough to fill a hall. McCook's opera house — most ambitious frontier towns built one as early as possible, the name being somewhat grander than the reality — would have hosted these visiting entertainers, giving the Smiths and their neighbors occasional windows onto the wider world of American popular culture. A traveling minstrel show, a dramatic reading, a concert by a touring musician — these were events that the whole town turned out for, talked about for weeks afterward, and remembered for years.

For men like Devier and Davie, the livery stable itself was a social institution. In the absence of any dedicated gathering place besides the church and the saloon, the livery was where men congregated to talk — about crops, cattle prices, land values, politics, the weather, and the endless speculation about the town's future that occupied the minds of every frontier businessman. Customers waiting for their horses or their rigs to be readied would linger to exchange news; traveling men would share information about conditions in other towns and counties; local farmers would catch up on weeks of isolation from the wider world. The Blue Front stable was, in this sense, one of McCook's informal newspaper offices — a place where information circulated and opinions were formed.

And then there was the hair tonic business, which the biography mentions with a kind of amused brevity that suggests it was remembered in the family as characteristic of Devier's irrepressible commercial instincts. At $2 a bottle — a not-inconsiderable sum in 1886, when a day's farm labor might earn $1 — it was either a remarkably effective product or a triumph of salesmanship, and with Devier one suspects the latter contributed at least as much as the former. The image of this bearded, top-hatted livery operator pressing bottles of hair tonic on his customers from behind the stable counter is one of the most vivid and human details the biography preserves, and it says more about the man's personality — his humor, his hustle, his fundamental enjoyment of the transaction — than almost any other single fact.

A Family Portrait

What emerges from all of this is a portrait of a family that was, by the standards of their time and place, doing well — not grandly, not without difficulty, but with the particular competence and resilience of people who had learned through long experience how to make a life in conditions that would have defeated less adaptable souls. Devier was at the height of his powers in 1886, running two operations in two states, patenting inventions, trading horses, selling hair tonic, and still finding time to sit in a church pew on Sunday mornings. Abbie was the indispensable center of it all — the milliner, the mother, the social anchor in a town the family had lived in for barely a year.

The challenges were real: the climate, the competition, the distances, the always-present memory of children lost too young. But in 1886 the worst was not yet visible — the droughts and economic crashes that would end the great plains boom were still a few years away, and McCook was still growing, still optimistic, still filling with new families who believed that this corner of Nebraska was the place where their American story would reach its best chapter. The Smiths, for the moment, believed it too.

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

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. Devier and Abigail (Vaux) Smith are my 2nd great-grandparents, and I have significant information about this family from the available records, but I know nothing about their day-to-day lives.

As always, I am amazed at what life was like in any place over 140 years ago. This description of their family life in Nebraska is interesting and so different from our current daily activities.

After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit this Smith family in 1886 Nebraska and witness their daily lives.  I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.

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

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 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.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Amanuensis Monday -- 1784 Deed of John Underhill and John Underhill Jr. Buying Land in Rockingham County, New Hampshire From Peter Wells

This week's document for transcription is the 1784 Deed of Peter Wells selling 100 acres of land in Chester, Rockingham County, New Hampshire to John Underhill and John Underhill Jr. for £60.  

a)  Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Deeds 1785-1787:  pages 221-222, image 117 of 825:


a)  Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Deeds 1785-1787:  pages 223-224, image 118 of 825:


The transcription of this deed, starting on page 222 below them iddle of the right-hand page of the first image, with the assistance of FamilySearch Full-Text Search:

[Page 222 starting at the top of the left-hand page of the image]:

[in the right-hand margin]

Wells
to 
Underhill

[In the main body of the deed]

Know all men by these presents that I Peter Wells of New Chester in County 
of Grafton in the State of New Hampshire yeoman For & in consideration of 
Sixty pounds lawful money to me in hand before the delivery hereof well & truly 
paid by John Underhill Gent'n & John Underhill Jun yeoman both of Chester in 
the County & State aforesaid the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge have 
given granted bargained & sold & by there do give grant bargain sell alien con-
vey & confirm to them the said John Underhill & John Underhill jun in their heirs & 
assigns in equal Shares forever A certain parcel of Land situate & being in 
Chester aforesaid containing by estimation one hundred acres more or less, 
it being that hundred acre Lot in the second part of the second division 
that is Number 106 laid out to the right of Ephraim Gill laying in 
the eighteenth range bounded first at the Southeast corner a white oak

[Page 223 from top of left-hand page of the second image]

N'o. 106 then north west & by west 176 rods by the highway to a white oak N'o 106
then North 29 degrees East one hundred & forty five rods by the highway to a 
Maple N'o 106 then East to the Southeast 176 rods to a white oak N'o. 106, then 
South 29 degrees West about 160 rods to the first bounds mentioned. To 
have & to hold the said granted & bargained premises with all the privileges &  
appurtenances to the same appertaining to them the said John Underhill 
& John Underhill jun, their heirs & assigns free of all incumbrances whatsoever 
alio absolute Estate of inheritance in fee simple forever. And I the said Peter 
Wells for myself heirs Executors & administrators do covenant & engage to Warrant 
to use[?] & defend the above premises to them the said John Underhill & John 
Underhill Ju'r their heirs & assigns against the lawful claims or demands of 
any person or persons whatsoever In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand 
& seal this twenty third day of March Anno Domini 1784.
Signed Sealed & delivered in presence of us  }  Peter Wells    {seal}
Jauriel Harriman Thomas Wells                 }
Rockingham Chester March 23'd  Then the above named Peter Wells acknow-
leged this Instrument to be his free act & Deed before me 
                                                                       John Webster Just Peace 
Rec'd & Recorded 16th August 1785. Sam Brooks Rdr

The source citation for this deed record is:

"Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States records," Deed of Peter Wells to John Underhill and John Underhill Jr, executed 23 March 1784, recorded 16 August 1785; imaged, FamilySearch   (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSRZ-PZM1?view=fullText : accessed 1 May 2026), Image Group Number 008298497, "Rockingham. Deeds, 1785-1787," pages 222-223, images 117-118 of  825; original records in Rockingham County, New Hampshire Register of Deeds.

This deed documents the sale of 100 acres of land in Chester, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, sold by Peter Wells of Grafton County to John Underhill and John Underhill Junior of Chester for £60 in lawful money on 23 March 1784 (recorded 16 August 1785).  

John Underhill (1720-1793) anmd his wife Joanna Healey (1718-1809) are my 6th great-grandparents, and John Underhill Junior (1745-1816) and his wife, Hannah Colby (1745-1791), are my 5th great-grandparents, through their son Amos Underhill (1772-1865) who married Mary Metcalf (1780-1855) in 1801 in Piermont, Grafton County, New Hampahire.

I found this record using the FamilySearch Full-Text Search feature by searching for John Underhill and New Hampshire. The Full-Text Search transcription missed, or misplaced, many words on the left-hand margin of the pages.

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

Read other transcriptions of records of my relatives and ancestors on my Amanuensis Monday Posts page.

NOTE: Genea-blogger John Newmark (who writes the excellent TransylvanianDutch blog) started a Monday blog theme years ago called "Amanuensis Monday." John offers this definition for "amanuensis:"

"A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another."

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/05/amanuensis-monday-1784-deed-of-john.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 comments 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 online immediately.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Best of the Genea-Blogs -- Week of 10 to 16 May 2026

 Scores of genealogy and family history bloggers write hundreds of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.


My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for most daily blog prompts or meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week:

*  Recreating Memories with ChatGPT Images 2.0: A Mother’s Day Journey Back to the Santa Monica Mall by Diane Henriks on Know Who Wears the Genes In Your Family.

*  New Strategies When Using Full-text Search at FamilySearch by Lisa S. Gorrell on My Trails Into the Past.

*  An intricate project with many parts… by Teresa Basinska Eckford on Writing My Past.

*  Limitations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Genealogical Research by Anjelica Oswald on Vita Brevis.

*  Genealogy Tips: How to Do a Reverse Image Search by Gena Philibert-Ortega on GenealogyBank Blog.

*  Debunking Centuries of Publications by Tanner P. Sousley on Tanner P. Sousley.

*  AI Meets TOS by Judy G. Russell on The Legal Genealogist.

*  Using AI in family history with Denyse Allen by Emma Cox on Journeys Into Genealogy.

*  Citations That Don’t Kill the Story You Want to Tell by Denyse Allen on Chronicle Makers.

*  Tribute Reels from MyHeritage by Roberta Estes on DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy.

*  Building My Bridge to 2076: Episode 5 by Lori Olson White on The Lost and Found Story Box.

*  Radio Helped the Adoptee by Daniel Loftus on Dan's Think Tank.

*  Lineage Society Websites: Free Genealogy Research Resources You Can Use Without Joining by Elizabeth Swanay O'Neal on Heart of the Family.

*  Ancestry Terms of Service Changes 2026: What Every Genealogist and DNA Tester Needs to Know (Effective May 12, 2026) by Thomas MacEntee on Genealogy Bargains.

*  Using ChatGPT for Genealogy by Jody Lutter on Family History Research by Jody Lutter.

*  AI Is Not the Problem, It’s the Mirror by Lori Samuelson on GenealogyAtHeart.com.

*  Our Stories250 | Celebrating as a Community of Family Storytellers: July 2026 by Barbara Tien on Projectkin.

*  The Research Mistake Most Genealogists Make with Army Morning Reports by Jennifer Holik on Soul Traveler.

*  FamilySearch Full-Text Search for the Win! by Margaret M. McMahon on A Week Of Genealogy.

Here are pick posts by other geneabloggers this week: 

*  The Chiddicks Observer Edition 54 [11 May 2026] by Paul Chiddicks on Paul Chiddicks.

*  Friday’s Family History Finds [15 May 2026] by Linda Stufflebean on Empty Branches on the Family Tree.
*  GenStack [16 May 2026] by Robin Stewart on Genealogy Matters.

Readers are encouraged to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add the blogs to your Favorites, Feedly, another RSS feed, or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me! I currently am reading posts from over 900 genealogy bloggers using Feedly, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

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

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.  Please note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Betty and Fred’s Story: Building a Life Together – Christmas Day 1943

 Here is the latest chapter in the story of the married life and times of my parents, Fred and Betty (Carringer) Seaver, who married in July 1942. The background information and the list of chapters of their life together are listed at the end of this post.  This is historical fiction with real people and real events, and is how it might have been.

And now we are up to Christmas Day in December 1943, two years into World War II, and life goes on.


                                     (AI NotebookLM Infographic - Christmas December 1943)

1)  Based on the biographies and the earlier stories, I asked Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 to tell another story - what happened next (I offered some suggestions!)?  Here is the next story (edited for more detail and accuracy): 


Betty and Fred's Story: Building a Life Together - Christmas Day 1943

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning on Twin Oaks Avenue began early, as mornings now invariably did. Randy, who had no concept of the holiday but an extremely consistent concept of when breakfast should occur, provided his usual announcement.

Fred got up with him so Betty could sleep an extra hour. He sat in the kitchen in the quiet dark before sunrise, Randy in the crook of his arm, the tree lights reflecting in the window, and thought about the year. Where they'd been in January — both of them working at Rohr, worried about the War, waiting for a future to come into focus. Where they were now -- their home, his work, the war, and a two month old baby.

He looked down at the small face, eyes open, considering the ceiling.

"Merry Christmas, Randy," he said.

Randy considered him briefly, then returned to the ceiling.

They opened gifts together after breakfast, Betty in her robe, Randy on the floor on his blanket observing the proceedings. Fred had wrapped everything carefully — perhaps too carefully, Betty thought, watching him fold edges with engineer precision — and Betty had tied everything with ribbon.

When Betty opened the burgundry dress, she was quiet for a moment.

She held it up and then looked at Fred and he could see her working to keep her expression simply appreciative rather than something more than that.

"Fred," she said.

"Do you like it?"

"I love it." She set it carefully aside and reached over and took his face in her hands and kissed him. "I love it."

The coat produced a similar effect. The handbag she held in her lap with the expression of a woman reuniting with a version of herself she'd temporarily misplaced.

"You talked to someone in the store," she said. "You didn't just wander in and grab something."

"A very helpful woman," Fred admitted.

Betty shook her head, smiling. "The perfume," she said, when she unwrapped it. "Oh, Fred. The perfume, too." She opened the poem book and read the inscription he'd written on the flyleaf — For Betty, who reads the real things — and when she found the letter at the bottom of her pile, sealed in its envelope, she set it carefully aside with the deliberate care of someone saving something important for a quiet moment.

Fred opened his suit — he ran his hand over the fabric with the expression of a man who hadn't expected to be moved by a suit — and then the tie, and the cufflinks. He examined the photograph in its frame for a long time without speaking.

"The back," Betty said.

He turned it over and read what she'd written. He set it on the side table and looked at it there for a moment and then looked at her.

"Betty," he said.

She understood that this was everything he meant to say.

Randy received his Christmas attention with the tolerance of an infant who is accustomed to being the center of things and has made a certain peace with it. The Noah's Ark figures from the Chamberlains went immediately into his fist and then immediately toward his mouth, which Fred intercepted. The knit cap from Marcia went back on his head, where it belonged. Fred had found, at a toy shop near the base, a small set of cloth blocks in primary colors — safe for mouthing, bright enough to engage his developing eyes — and a wooden rattle with a satisfying sound that Randy discovered with something approaching satisfaction.

Betty had found a mobile to hang above the crib: small wooden shapes painted in red and yellow and blue, balanced to turn gently in any draft of air. When Fred hung it that afternoon and Betty put Randy below it, he stared up at the turning shapes with the specific deep attention he reserved for things that struck him as genuinely interesting.

"He loves it," Betty said.

"He loves anything that moves," Fred said.

"He's your son," Betty said.

Christmas Afternoon

Fred wore his new suit and tie, and Betty wore her new burgundy dress with the green coat.  They drove to Fern Street in the early afternoon, worried about how they would find Betty’s grandparents, Della and Austin Carringer.

The house was quieter than it had been at Thanksgiving. Lyle opened the door, and behind him the house had the particular muted quality of a place where someone is ill — sound softened, movement careful, a consciousness of the situation.

Betty’s Nana, Georgianna Auble, and Emily were in the kitchen. They had started cooking in the morning, she told Betty, and the kitchen smelled of roasting chicken and potatoes and the spiced apple she'd simmered on the stove since noon. She held Randy for a few minutes and called him “my darling” and which she'd called Betty the same thing when Betty was small.

Edgar Carringer was in the front room with Austin, and when Fred and Betty came in, Uncle Edgar stood and took Betty's hands and said "Merry Christmas, dear" with a simplicity that covered more than it said. He was a quiet man, Edgar — quieter than Austin, cut from similar cloth but less worn by the years, perhaps because he'd had no child to bury, no particular catastrophe. He had always been kind to Betty in the sidelong way of bachelor uncles who are not sure exactly how to be kind but mean it.

Austin sat in his chair near the fire and he looked, Betty thought, smaller than he had at Thanksgiving. Not in body but in something harder to name — as though some light-keeping mechanism had been turned down. He smiled when he saw them, and the smile was genuine, but it cost him.

"How is she?" Betty asked, after they'd settled in. Della was in her own bed in her own house with a friend watching her.

"Resting," Austin said. "She had a decent night." A pause. "She'll want to see you."

It was over dinner that Fred and Lyle found themselves at the end of the table together, the conversation elsewhere for a moment, and Lyle said what was on both their minds.

"Have you heard anything?" Lyle said. "About the draft."

Fred was quiet for a moment. He looked at his plate and then back up. "Nothing definite. The job at Rohr supporting aircraft manufacturing keeps me deferred for now. But nothing is permanent. I know that."

Lyle nodded. He had known that too, but he'd wanted to hear Fred say it plainly, because he respected men who spoke plainly.

"If it happens," Lyle said, keeping his voice low, not carrying to where Betty sat with her mother, "Betty and Randy could come here."

Fred looked at him.

"I mean that," Lyle said. "This is her home. It always will be. There's room, and Emily and I —" he stopped. "We'd want them here. Not just want. We'd need them here." He glanced toward Emily, across the table. "Emily would need them. And Betty shouldn't be alone in that house with the boy. Not if you're gone."

Fred was quiet for a long moment. The fire shifted in the grate.

"I've thought about it," Fred said. "I've thought about it every week since Randy was born. What happens to them if —" He stopped. "I don't know how to —" He stopped again, because Fred Seaver was not a man who said I'm afraid easily, and he was finding that what he actually meant was close enough to that to require careful navigation.

"You don't have to know how to feel about it," Lyle said. "I'm just telling you an option, so that when you're wherever you are, you know the plan." He met Fred's eyes. "She'll be taken care of. Randy will be taken care of. That's not nothing."

Fred looked at this man — his father-in-law, his Betty's father, this solid and undemonstrative man who had just told him, in the plainest possible terms, what love looked like when it was organized for practical use.

"Thank you, Lyle," Fred said. It was not enough. He knew it was not enough. But it was what he had.

Lyle nodded once, and reached for the bread, and the moment was over and yet not over — it would stay with Fred through everything that came after.

Betty and her mother cleared the dinner things, and then Betty told her mother she was going to look in on Della in the house across the block.

Emily nodded. "She's been asking about you," she said quietly. "Don't stay too long. She tires easily."

Betty Visits Della

The bedroom was warm and dim, a lamp burning low on the bedside table, the curtains closed against the dark. Della lay against her pillows with the stillness of a woman who has learned to be still by necessity. But her eyes were open, and when Betty came through the door, they found her immediately and sharpened.

"Betty," she said. "Come here where I can see you properly."

Betty came and sat in the chair pulled close to the bedside — Emily's chair, she understood, or Georgianna's; the chair of whoever had been sitting with her today.

Della looked at her for a moment with those sharp old eyes that had not dimmed regardless of what else had.

"Where's the baby?" Della asked.

"Asleep, I think. Grandpa Lyle has him."

Della smiled at that. "Good. He looked like Lyle, a little. Around the eyes." She paused, collecting breath. "Lyle would have made a good cowboy."

Betty laughed softly. "Don't tell him that. He'll want a horse."

Della's smile lingered. "Sit with me."

They sat in the warm dim room for a moment in the quiet that belongs to sickrooms, which is a different kind of quiet than other quiets — more present, somehow, more weighted with the actual.

"I wanted to come earlier," Betty said. "I kept meaning to get over here more —"

"Stop," Della said, simply. "You have a new baby. You're right where you should be."

Betty looked at her hands. "I wanted to tell you something. I've been wanting to say it." She looked up. "You've been such a wonderful grandmother. To me — my whole life. You always —" she stopped. Started again. "When I was little and we'd come to visit, you made me feel like the most important person who'd ever walked in the door. Do you remember that?"

Della regarded her with the expression of a woman looking at a long unrolling of time.

"I remember everything," she said. "That's the one thing I still have. The memory." She was quiet for a moment. "I remember you at — oh, you must have been two years old. Maybe three. You used to come in the door and go immediately to the kitchen because you remembered where the cookies were. Didn't ask. Just went straight there." She paused. "Very efficient."

Betty laughed, and it caught slightly in her throat.

"And you were about seven," Della went on, "and you helped me string beans for an entire afternoon without complaining, and when we were done you looked at the pot and said, very seriously, 'I think they're ready, Grandma,' as though you had been supervising the whole operation. Which I suppose you felt you had been."

"I remember that," Betty said softly. "I remember the kitchen. The way it smelled."

"You grew up so straight and good," Della said, and her voice had something in it now that was not quite the everyday use of the voice. "And then you married that young man, and I watched you last month — I watched you at Thanksgiving with your baby — and I thought: well. She did it. She became —" Della stopped. Her hand moved slightly on the blanket. "She became exactly what she was meant to be."

Betty couldn't speak for a moment.

She reached out and took Della's hand — thin now, the bones of it close to the surface — and held it.

"I need you to remember something," Della said, after a moment. "Can you do that?"

"Yes," Betty said.

"Remember us," Della said. "Me and Austin. Not sad, you understand — not just this part. Remember us the whole way back. This house, and the early years, and Austin when he was young and foolish —" a brief smile — "which he was, before he got old and merely stubborn. Remember us from the beginning."

"I will," Betty said. "I promise."

"Tell Randy," Della said. "Someday when he's old enough. Tell him his great-grandmother Della held him and called him a fine boy. Tell him we were here."

"I'll tell him," Betty said. "I promise I'll tell him."

Della looked at her for another long moment, with those eyes that had seen 1862 and everything since.

"You're a good girl," she said. "You always were."

Betty sat with her until she slept.

She came out into the hallway and stood there for a moment alone before she went back to her parents house.

She put her hand flat against the wall for a moment.

We were here, Della had said.

I'll tell him, Betty had promised.

She straightened. She smoothed her dress.

As she came in through the kitchen, she could hear Austin's voice in the front room — talking to Fred, she thought, or perhaps to Lyle — the low rumble of it, the continued fact of it.

It was a sad ride home to Twin Oaks Avenue in Chula Vista. Randy slept in Betty's arms, while she sobbed thinking about her grandmother, and Fred drove, not knowing what to say. Betty recalled that she had forgotten to read Fred's Christmas letter.

To be continued...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2) Here is the Google NotebookLM Video Overview about Betty, Fred and Randy's life on Christmas Day 1943:  

3) This story is historical fiction based on real people -- my parents and me -- and a real event in a real place. I don't know the full story of these events -- but this is how it might have been. I hope that it was at least this good! Claude is such a good story writer! I added some details and corrected some errors in Claude's initial version.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in this family story.

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

The AI-assisted ABC Biography of my mother, Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver, is in ABC Biography of #3 Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver (1919-2002) of San Diego, California. I also  wrote Betty's Story: The First-Year Art Teacher about the start of her teaching career.

The AI-assisted ABC Biography of my father, Frederick Walton Seaver, is in ABC Biography of #2 Frederick Walton Seaver Jr. (1911-1983) of Massachusetts and San Diego, California.  I also wrote Fred's Story: The Three-Day Cross-Country Escape  and Fred's Story: "I Need A Girl" about him coming to San Diego, and wanting a girlfriend.

Here are the previous chapters in this story:

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

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.  Please note that all comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)