Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 15 June 2025

Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 15 June 2025).  

1)  Hosted and moderated the 11 June Research Group Meeting of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society on Zoom with 17 in attendance.  We discussed Rick Crume's InsideGenealogy checklist, Family Tree Magazine's 101 best genealogy websites, Reclaim the Records latest case, and genealogy-related YouTube channels.   I also talked about my ABC Biographies, being interviewed by Barbara Tien on ProjectKin, and writing AI-assisted historical fiction stories.  

2)  Watched the San Diego Genealogical Society Program Meeting meeting on Saturdsay on Zoom. Judy Nimer Muhn discussing  "You can take it with you! Mobile Technology for Genealogy" and "Native American, First Nations, Indian: Researching Indigenous Peoples."

3)  Participated in Mondays With Myrt on Monday.  We discussed FamilySearch Full-Text Search, Canadiana Heritage website, the Civil War muster roll for Henry Carringer, the Ancestry photo matching, and more.

4)  Presented "Ancestor Bios: The 'ABC' Process with Randy Seaver" hosted by Barbara at ProjectKin to a Substack audience. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp8ml7l-k_4).  Wrote about it in My Interview on Projectkin and the Upcoming Zoom Meeting About ABC Biographies.

5)  Transcribed the 1802 Deed of Josiah Sawtell Selling Land in Worcester County, Massachusetts to Seth Montague with help from FamilySearch Full-Text Search.

6)  Wrote a genealogical sketch for 2nd Great-GrandUncle Stephen Hazard Oatley (1822-1863) of New England for the 52 Relatives theme.

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

• Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 28 May to 3 June 2025
• Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 29 May to 4 June 2025
• Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of 1 to 7 June 2025

8)  Wrote two "ABC Biographies" using my AI-assisted "Ancestor Biography Creation" process and an AI-assisted memoir in:

• ABC Biography of #25 Rebecca (Spangler) Carringer (1832-1901) of Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado and California
• ABC Biography of #26 Devier James Lamphier Smith (1839-1894) of New York, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska
• Frank Walton Seaver's Life Memories - An AI-Assisted Memoir

9)  Requested free AI tools to tell me about this genealogy and family history subject:

• Ask AI: "What Was Life Like for Hannah Rich age 11, in 1835 in Hilperton, Wiltshire?"

10)  Wrote an AI-assisted short story about my great-grandparents - "Austin and Della: Life Stories - Part 2: New Beginnings" - AI Historical Fiction.

11)  Requested free AI tools to create a poem and song lyrics about my 3rd great-grandmother,  Rebecca (Hill) Rich (1790-1862) and had Suno.com create a song using the lyrics.  Posted the poem created by Gemini 2.5 Flash, the song lyrics created by Claude Sonnet 4, the Suno song link, and the ContentLM podcast link in "Rebecca's Song" -- A Family History Poem, Song and Podcast Created by Artificial Intelligence.

                                         (image created by OpenAI ChatGPT4)

12)  My AncestryDNA now has 49,347 DNA matches (up 57 from 8 June) with 2097 "close" matches today (up 4), with no new ThruLines.  Added Notes to 0 Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic.   MyHeritageDNA now has 13,578 DNA matches (up 12 from 8 June) for me.  Reviewed the new DNA matches on AncestryDNA, MyHeritageDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.  

13)  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 74,593 profiles (up 3 from last week) and 147,769 source citations (up 4).  

14) Wrote 22 Genea-Musings blog posts last week (Sunday through Saturday), of which two were a press release. The most viewed post last week was ABC Biography of #25 Rebecca (Spangler) Carringer (1832-1901) of Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado and California with over 303 views.  Genea-Musings had about 142.000 page views last week and over 569,000 views over the past month. 

15)  Real life events:  Visited Linda several days at her memory care facility and we played Uno. Went to the grocery store on Monday and Friday. Still reading G-Man by Stephen Hunter.  The Padres season continues and I watched six games this week - they were 2-4 this week (overall 39-31 now). 

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