Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 26 March to 1 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, 1 April 2026, 9:45 a.m.:  DNA Matches: Getting Answers from Unresponsive Cousins by Kate Penney Howard.

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 1 April 2026, 11 a.m.:  PANEL: DNA Surprises and Family Identity: A Guide to Preparation, Processing, and Family Storytelling by Laura Hedgecock.

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 8 April 2026, 11 a.m.:  Advertising the Law: The Gems in the Legal Notices by Judy G. Russell.

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 8 April 2026, 5 p.m.:  From Research to Data with AI 3 of 5: Organising Information—Tables, Tags, and Templates by Andrew Redfern.

* Legacy Family Tree Webinar - Friday, 10 April 2026, 11 a.m.:  Black and White Southern Families in Southern Plantation Records by Ari Wilkins.

3) Recent Podcasts:

* Ancestors and Algorithms:  Ep. 31: The Homestead Claim That Vanished | AI-Assisted Homestead and Land Record Research




4) Recent YouTube Videos

*  AIGroup I nnovations LLC:  Genealogy Genie AI AI Agent Driven Genealogical Research Platform March 2026

*  American Ancestors:  The Houses of Guinness

* Ancestry Aimee:  Easiest, Safest Way to Use A.I.

*  Carole McCulloch Geneablogger:  Live with Jennifer Jones



*  DearMYRTLE's Archive:  Mondays with Myrt - 30 Mar 2026

* Ellen Thompson-Jennings - Family History Hound:  You'll Want to Get a MyHeritage DNA Kit After You See This Video








*  How We Got Here Genealogy: They Had to Leave Everything:

*  Int'l Institute of Genealogical Studies:  United Empire Loyalists: Black Loyalists

* Italian Roots and Genealogy: Inside Ray Vento's Italian Family Roots
* Italian Roots and Genealogy:  


*  Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems:  Time and place for genealogy research

*  National Genealogical Society:  NGS 2026 Family History Conference Preview

* Trace Your New England Roots:  Genealogists Keep Making This Mistake With Old Wills

5) Did you miss the last post in this series -- Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 19 to 25 March 2026?

Read past Genealogy Education Bytes here.

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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-26.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 Frederick Schaffner (1828-1899) in San Francisco in 1899

  I wrote an AI-assisted ABC biography for the family of my wife's 2nd great-grandfather Frederick Schaffner in ABC Biography of Frederick Schaffner (1828-1899) Family of Germany, New York and San Francisco, based on my genealogical research over 38 years. 

I wondered what Frederick Schaffner might have told his grandchildren in a life memoir in 1899. 


(AI Google NotebookLM Infographic for Frederick Schaffner's life memoir)

1)  I requested Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 to create a memoir told by Frederick Schaffner about his life in 1899.  The prompt was:  "Please write a life memoir for Frederick Schaffner based on the attached biography, as he might tell to his grandchildren in 1899."

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


As I Remember It
The Life of Frederick Schaffner
Told to His Grandchildren
San Francisco, California • 1899

The Boy from Darmstadt

Pull your chair a little closer, children. The fire is warm and I am not as loud as I once was. There. That is better.

I want to tell you about a city you have never seen, in a country most of you know only from what I have told you. I want to tell you about Darmstadt — my Darmstadt — because that is where I began, and a man should know where he began.

I was born there on the sixteenth of June, in the year 1828. Darmstadt was the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Hesse — a proper city, not a village, mind you — with grand buildings, a ducal palace, wide avenues lined with linden trees, and the smell of baking bread drifting out of every other window on a Sunday morning. Germany in those days was not one nation as it is now. It was a patchwork of kingdoms and duchies and principalities, each with its own duke or prince, each with its own little army and its own taxes and its own way of doing things. Hesse was one such place. We were proud of it.

I cannot tell you much about my parents. They are gone now, gone so long that the details have softened in my memory like old leather. What I can tell you is that Darmstadt was a city of craftsmen and merchants and scholars, and that a boy growing up there in the 1830s grew up with certain notions — notions of hard work, of order, of the importance of one's community. Those notions served me well later, though I did not always know it at the time.

The Germany of my boyhood was a restless place. There was hunger in the countryside — harvests had failed, and the old ways of farming could not feed so many mouths. There was talk in the taverns and the market squares of revolution, of rights, of a unified German nation. I was young, and I listened to these conversations with wide eyes. But even as a boy I could see that the pot was boiling, and I began to understand that a clever man might do well to find a new pot altogether.

America was the word on everyone's lips. The New World. A place where a man with nothing but his two hands and his willingness to work could make something of himself. I had cousins who had gone. I had neighbors who had gone. Letters came back, and the letters were full of wonder — of wide streets and open land and a government that did not concern itself with whether you had paid your dues to a duke.

By the time I was a young man of twenty or so, my mind was made up. I would go.

New York, and a Woman Named Susanna

I will not bore you with the voyage across the Atlantic. Suffice it to say that it was long, and that the sea does not care a fig for your comfort. I arrived in New York in the late 1840s or thereabouts — I confess the exact year has blurred a little with time — and I was not alone. Half of Europe seemed to have had the same idea at the same moment.

New York in those years was extraordinary and overwhelming in equal measure. The harbor was a forest of masts. The docks teemed with men speaking a dozen languages. The streets of lower Manhattan were packed and loud and full of smells that I shall not describe to young ears. But for a young German in New York, there was one saving grace: we had our own neighborhoods. On the Lower East Side, in the part they called Kleindeutschland — Little Germany — you could walk for blocks and hear nothing but German, smell sausage and sauerkraut, find a Lutheran church and a German-language newspaper and a beer cellar where the proprietor knew your name.

It was in New York that I met Susanna Hoffman. She was German too, probably from somewhere in the old country — I knew her people as little as she knew mine, for we had both come over with nothing but ourselves. She was a fine woman, Susanna. Quiet, but steady. The kind of woman who, when times are hard, folds up her worry and puts it in her pocket and gets on with the business of living.

We were married in 1850. It was not a grand affair. In New York in those days, among people like us, a wedding was a simple thing — a few friends, a minister, a good meal if you were lucky. What mattered was what came after.

What came after was your great-grandfather Herman. Born in November of 1851, right there in New York City. I remember holding him for the first time and thinking: this is the reason I crossed the ocean. This boy, right here.

But joy and sorrow walk close together in this life, children. Susanna did not stay with us long. She was taken from us before Herman had learned to run — I think it was 1853, though grief has a way of blurring the calendar. She was young. Far too young. I grieved her as a man should grieve a good wife, and then I did what a man with a small child must do: I carried on.

The Road to California

I met Martha Matilda in 1854 after Susanna died and married her in 1855. She was Irish — born in Ireland, though she had come to America as so many of her countrypeople had, driven out by the famine and the hardship of those terrible years. She was a strong woman, Martha. Strong the way Irish women are strong — which is to say, in a way that does not advertise itself but does not bend, either.

By then, the whole country was talking about California. The Gold Rush of 1849 had stirred something in the American blood, and even though the easy gold was long gone by the mid-1850s, California was still the place. San Francisco was growing faster than any city I had ever heard of. There were fortunes to be made — not necessarily in the goldfields, but in the city itself. In trade, in commerce, in feeding and clothing and housing and, yes, entertaining the thousands of men who poured through those streets every month.

Martha and I talked it over. We had young Herman, and she had her own stout heart, and we were young enough still to believe that the best chapter of life was yet to come. And so we went west. We traveled by steamship from New York City to Panama, and then took a train across Panama, and another steamship in the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco.  It was a long trip and I can tell you many stories about it another time. We landed in San Francisco in the summer of 1855.

San Francisco in 1856 was unlike anything I had seen in Germany or New York. It was rough and loud and magnificent. The hills were wild. The bay was enormous. The fog rolled in off the ocean in the afternoons and turned the whole city silver and cold. And everywhere — everywhere — there was energy. Men building things, selling things, arguing about things. The city had burned down several times already and each time it simply rose up again, a little bigger and a little louder than before.

I became an American citizen on the first of November, 1856, in the Fourth District Court of San Francisco. I want you to understand what that meant to me. I had been born a subject of a German duke who had no particular interest in my welfare. And there I was, standing in a California courtroom, swearing an oath to a republic — a nation of laws, where the President himself had been born poor. I was not an emotional man, as you know. But on that day I permit myself to admit that my eyes were not entirely dry.

I found work as a cook. It was honest work, and I was good at it. A man who can cook well is never without employment, and in a city of single men far from their mothers' kitchens, a good cook is practically a saint.

Family, Loss, and Lombard Street

Martha and I built our life here on these San Francisco streets. Our children came one after another — Matilda in 1857, young Frederick in 1862, Louis in 1864, Charles in 1867, and last of all little Nellie, our youngest, born in 1870. And Herman was with us too, growing into a fine young man, becoming as Californian as though he had been born here.

By 1866 I had established myself well enough to be on the Register of Voters — no small thing for a man who had arrived in this country with nothing but the clothes on his back and a willingness to work. I was living at Church Street, in Ward Two. I paid my taxes. I knew my neighbors. I had become, in every sense that mattered, a San Franciscan.

In the 1870s I went into the saloon business, and that is where I stayed for the rest of my working years. I know what some of you are thinking — a saloon is not a church. That is true. But I will tell you something about the saloon business that the temperance ladies do not like to admit: a good saloon is the heart of a neighborhood. It is where men come after a hard day's work to sit down, to talk, to hear the news, to feel for an hour or two that they are not entirely alone in the world. I kept a clean establishment. I was fair to my customers. I am not ashamed of it.

But the years brought losses too. In January of 1875, my dear Martha Matilda was taken from us. She died in Oakland — she had gone there for reasons I will not trouble you with now — and she was only thirty-seven years old. Thirty-seven. Standing here at seventy-one, I can hardly comprehend it. She left me with five children, the youngest — your Aunt Nellie — just four years old.

I grieved. A man who has buried two wives before his fiftieth birthday has earned the right to grieve. But there were children in the house, and children do not wait for a man's grief to be finished before they need feeding and clothing and minding.

Dora

I met Dora Mossmann later in 1875 after Martha died. She was from Oldenburg, in northern Germany — a different part of the old country from my own Hesse, but German through and through, and after all those years in California, there was something steadying about sitting across from someone who had grown up hearing the same language, eating the same food, marking the same holidays.

We were married on the twentieth of April, 1876, in Alameda. Dora was a widow herself — she understood loss, as I understood it. We did not pretend that this was a young couple's romance. We were two people of middle age who had survived much and who understood the value of a steady hand beside you.

Dora stepped into this family without complaint. She helped me raise the younger children — Charles and Nellie were still at home, still needing a mother's attention — and she ran our house on Lombard Street with a calm efficiency that I have always admired. When I took stock of my years, as old men do, I count Dora as one of the great mercies of my life.

The children grew up. Herman married his Mary Ann and had children of his own — three of you here. Matilda married her Bradford and moved to Alameda. Frederick married and settled here in the city. Charles went north to Oregon. And Nellie — little Nellie who was four years old when her mother died — married her Norman Arter and made a fine life for herself right here in San Francisco. I have watched all of this from my chair on Lombard Street with something that I can only describe as satisfaction.

What an Old Man Knows

I have been a citizen of this city for more than forty years now. I have lived through the Gold Rush's aftermath, through the building of the railroads, through fire and earthquake and fog and sunshine. I have buried two wives and outlived neighbors and friends. I have watched children grow from infants to parents, watched San Francisco grow from a rough camp into a real city with opera houses and cable cars and electric lights.

What does an old man know, after all of that?

He knows that the ocean is wider than it looks on a map, and that crossing it changes you in ways you cannot fully measure until you are very old. He knows that a new country asks things of you — courage, stubbornness, the willingness to start over when everything falls apart — and that those things, once given, become part of who you are.

He knows that a woman who runs a household well and loves her children fiercely is worth more than any duke or general or railroad baron. I have been lucky enough to know three such women.

He knows that work — honest work, whatever the work is — is not a shame but a dignity. I have been a cook and a saloon keeper. I fed people. I gave them a place to rest and talk. There is nothing in that to regret.

He knows that a man's lodge brothers matter. My brothers in King Solomon Lodge No. 260 have been my companions for years — men who believe, as I believe, that we owe something to one another, that the strong should help the weak, that a handshake means something.

And he knows — this, perhaps, most of all — that the best thing he ever did was to come here, to this wild California shore, and plant himself down and stay. I came as a stranger. I leave as a grandfather. That is more than most men can claim.

So. That is my story. Or as much of it as an old man's memory can hold at one sitting.

Go home now. Kiss your mothers for me. Remember where you came from — not just California, not just America, but Darmstadt, and New York, and all the long road between.

And know this: I am proud of every one of you.
— Frederick Schaffner, 423 Lombard Street, San Francisco, California, March 1899
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3)  The Video Overview of Frederick Schaffner'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 Frederick Schaffner might have told his grandchildren in 1899.  

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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.

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/04/life-memoir-of-frederick-schaffner-1828.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 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.

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The Thomas Richmond Family in Massachusetts in About 1888 -- (Not So) Wordless Wednesday #910

 This is a priceless (to me) image in my computer file folders: 

The people in this photograph are (left to right):

* Charles Percival Richmond (standing, 1880-1910), son of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.
* Everett Glens Richmond (seated, 1875-1917), son of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.
* Alma Bessie Richmond (seated on Edwin's lap, 1882-1962), daughter of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.
* Julia (White) Richmond (seated, 1848-1912)
* James Henry Richmond (seated on Julia's lap, 1886-1913), son of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.
* Thomas Richmond (seated, 1848-1917)
* Edwin Thomas Richmond (seated on Thomas' lap, 1883-1935), son of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.
* Emily White Richmond (seated, 1879-1966), daughter of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.
* Grace Louise Richmond (seated, 1876-1963), daughter of Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond.

The oldest daughter, Anne Frances Richmond (1869-1939) was not in the picture.

This Richmond family photograph was probably taken on the Richmond farm in Putnam, Windham County, Connecticut. It was probably taken in 1887-8 (since James, the youngest, was still in a "dress"). - perhaps on the occasion of the 20th wedding anniversary of Thomas and Julia.

This photograph is in the possession of Randy Seaver, and was obtained from the Seaver family photograph collection handed down by his parents.

My grandmother is Alma Bessie Richmond (1882-1962), who married Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942) in 1900.  Thomas and Julia (White) Richmond are my great-grandparents.

I enhanced and colorized a black-and-white photograph with the MyHeritage photo tools. 

This photograph is a part of my family history.  

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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.    I moderate all comments and they may not appear immediately - please write only one comment.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 25 to 31 March 2026

 Welcome to Genealogy News Bytes, posted on Tuesday afternoon for the past week, where we try to highlight the most important genealogy and family history news  items that came across our desktop since the last issue.    


1)  Genealogy and Family History News Articles:

















4)  Genealogy Software and Apps



5)  New or Updated Genealogy Digital Record Collections:













6)  Did you miss the last post in this series?  See Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 18 to 24 March 2026.


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The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/03/genealogy-news-bytes-week-of-25-to-31.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 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, and may not appear immediately.

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Star In Your Own MyHeritage Traits Video

 I received this information frrom Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage recently:

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I’m excited to share that we’ve just released an amazing new way to experience MyHeritage DNA Traits. Now you can create a fun, free, personalized Traits Video that highlights some of your most prominent traits! The video is created with AI and showcases your strongest traits with a witty, playful twist — like steam coming out of your ears because you’re sensitive to chili peppers. It’s the kind of video that makes you smile and think “I’ve got to show this to my family and friends.”

Since its release, MyHeritage DNA Traits has quickly become a popular add-on, enabling users to discover why they might be an early riser, love to exercise, or tend to take the lead. I’ve shared my own Traits Video below so you can see how it looks.



If you’re a MyHeritage DNA customer and already received your MyHeritage Trait reports, head over to the Traits overview page to create your video. Simply upload 1–3 selfies and within 15 minutes you’ll have your video. You can create a Traits Video from the MyHeritage website on desktop and mobile web, and from the MyHeritage mobile app.


Traits Videos are perfect for sharing on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and other social media platforms. We encourage you to share your videos with the hashtags #MyHeritage and #MyHeritageDNA. You can also download your videos to your computer or mobile device, and share them later however you’d like.

 Read more about the Traits Video and view wonderful examples in the blog post.

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NOTE:  I couldn't wait  to try this. I checked that I had my Traits shown on my MyHeritage account.  But I could not see the purple "Create Traits Video" button. I  contact ed Daniel and he wrote back that "I am very sorry as I just learned that due to legal restrictions this feature is not available in California   ;-("  Well, that sucks, doesn't it?

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Disclosure: I receive a complimentary 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/2026/03/star-in-your-own-myheritage-traits-video.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 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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