I attended the AI day at the i4GG conference in San Diego online last Friday, and watched five presentations by Steve Little and Mark Thompson, including one that described and demonstrated the new photorealistic image generation capabilities recently offered by OpenAI's ChatGPT tool. They also described it in the webinar on the same day and at the same time on Family Tree Webinars - see Picture the Past: An Introduction to AI Images for Family Historians (paywalled)).
I wanted to try it out so I tried to create a prompt about my 2nd great-grandfather's (Devier J. Smith, 1839-1894) sod cabin in Cheyenne County, Kansas in 1885.
1) My prompt for the free ChatGPT4 Image tool was: "Please create a photorealistic image of a sod cabin on the windy northwestern Kansas plains in 1885 with a stream running by the cabin, trees along the stream and randomly on the plain, with a horse and wagon, and a 50 year old bearded man working on his sod house."
The resulting image was:
The modified image was:
3) I also asked ChatGPT4: "Please tell me about building a sod cabin in 1885. How big were they, what tools were used, what materials did they use? "
The response was:
Building a sod cabin in 1885 was a practical solution for homesteaders on the treeless plains, especially in areas like northwestern Kansas. These cabins, also called soddies, were made from prairie sod—thickly rooted grass and soil cut into blocks.
Size and Structure
- Most sod cabins measured 12 to 16 feet wide and 16 to 24 feet long, though some were larger.
- Walls were typically 2 to 3 feet thick, providing excellent insulation against heat and cold.
- The roof was often made of sod on a wooden frame, but if lumber was available, shingles or boards were used.
Materials Used
- Sod blocks: Cut from the prairie using a plow, each block was about 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 4 inches thick.
- Wood: Often scarce on the plains, but used for roof support beams, doors, and windows.
- Grass or straw: Sometimes mixed with mud to reinforce walls.
- Rock or logs: If available, these were used as a foundation to keep the walls from absorbing too much moisture.
- Canvas or tar paper: Used to line the inside walls to keep dirt from falling inside.
Tools Used
- Breaking plow or sod cutter: To cut the sod into uniform blocks.
- Spade or shovel: For shaping and moving sod blocks.
- Hatchet or axe: If wood was available for beams or rafters.
- Saw and hammer: For constructing doors, windows, and roof supports.
- Auger or brace-and-bit: To drill holes for pegs or nails.
- Rope and pulley: Sometimes used to lift heavy sod blocks.
Construction Process
- Foundation: Some cabins were built directly on the ground, but rocks or logs were used if available.
- Laying the Walls: Sod bricks were stacked in an overlapping pattern, much like bricks in a masonry wall.
- Doors and Windows: Frames were installed, often made from wood brought in by wagon.
- Roofing: If sod was used, it was laid over a wooden frame and covered with tar paper or straw to reduce leaks.
- Finishing Touches: Inside walls were sometimes covered with muslin, newspaper, or plastered with mud to make them smoother.
Challenges and Benefits
- Pros: Cheap, well-insulated, fire-resistant, and relatively easy to build.
- Cons: Dirt would sometimes fall from the ceiling, walls could become damp, and rain could cause leaks if not built properly.
- Many homesteaders lived in sod houses until they could afford to build wooden homes. However, some soddies lasted for decades!
- Would you like any details on a specific aspect, like roofing methods or interior furnishings?
Devier J. Smith traveled every summer from 1885 to 1893 from McCook, Nebraska (2,600 feet altitude) to Cheyenne County, Kansas (3,300 feet altitude) along the south fork of the Republican River to build his cabin. His "ranch" was along the river (I found the plot in More Land Patents in Cheyenne County, Kansas for Devier Smith and Della Smith). He may have built his cabin on a slope dug into the dirt so that one side of the cabin was protected from the elements.
Devier's daughter Della Smith (1862-1944) also had 40 acres, and Della's neighbor was her future husband, Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946). Austin and Della married in 1887 and took the train to San Diego and lived there the rest of their lives.
Devier's wife and children thought that the high altitude and dryer weather helped them breathe better and was healthier. His son David Devier Smith may have helped build the cabin, and perhaps Devier hired help from the nearby town of Wano (near St. Francis).
Austin Carringer may have built a sod cabin on his land because he lived there for months on end before his marriage.
The ChatGPT4 image generator worked really well.
4) I tried the same prompt on (free) Google Gemini 2.0 Flash and received:
(image created by Gemini)
(image created by Grok)
(image created by CoPilot)
8) How would you have improved the prompt? Perhaps I should provide more detail about the cabin, the terrain, the sky, etc?
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