Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 13 July 2025

Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 13 July 2025).  

1)  Moderated and presented the 9 July Research Group meeting of the Chula Vista Genealogical Society.  Reported on MyHeritage LiveMemory, Dan Maloney's Handwritten Text Recognition tool, Cheri Passey's new book, free genealogy websites and my own work.  The discussion question was "How have you told your life story?  Or your ancestors' life stories?"

2)  Participated as a panelist on Mondays With Myrt on 7 July.  We discussed Dan's Handwriting Recognition Tool, my Austin and Della's Life Stories, Hillary's AncestryDNA Clusters, and more.

3)  Watched Yvette Hoitink's presentation on "Writing Research Reports to Yourself"  on Zoom in the GeneaBloggers Premium Member monthly meeting.

4)  Transcribed the 1765 Deed of Moses Smith Buying Land in Wrentham, Mass. from Stephen Blake with help from FamilySearch Full-Text Search.

5)  Wrote a genealogical sketch for 2nd Great-GrandAunt Mary Eliza (Oatley) Pray (1831-1907) of New England for the 52 Relatives theme.

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

• Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 2 to 8 July 2025
• Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 3 to 9 July 2025
• Best of the Genea-Blogs - 6 to 12 July 2025

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

• ABC Biography of #35 Elizabeth Horton (Dill) Smith (1791-1869) of Massachusetts
  
• ABC Biography of #36 Zachariah Hildreth (1783-1857) of Massachusetts
• Elizabeth Horton (Dill) Smith's Life Memories - An AI-Assisted Memoir

8)  Wrote an AI-assisted short story about the life of my great-grandparents - "Austin and Della Life Stories - Part 6: Life Happens"  - AI-Assisted Historical Fiction.

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

• Ask AI: "Ten Interview Questions to Ask Abbey Ardelle "Della" (Smith) Carringer About Her Life Experiences, With Potential Answers"

• Ask AI: "What Was Life Like for Elizabeth Dill, Age 15, in 1806 in Eastham, Massachusetts?"    

                                           (image created by OpenAI ChatGPT4)

10)  Requested free AI tools to create a poem, song lyrics and a podcast about my 3rd great-grandfather,  Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) and had Suno.com create a song using the lyrics.  Posted the poem created by X Grok 3, the song lyrics created by Anthropic Claude 4, the Suno song link, and the ContentLM podcast link in "Amy's Light" -- A Family History Poem, Song and Podcast Created by Artificial Intelligence on Genea-Musings and Substack.

                                               (image created by OpenAI ChatGPT4)

11)  Posted some of my life memories on Genea-Musings and Substack - see 

Monday Memories - My Work History.

.

12)  My AncestryDNA now has 49,492 DNA matches (up 45 from 6 July) with 2,099 "close" matches today (up 1), with one new ThruLines, but I'm sure it's wrong.  Added Notes to 3 Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic. Received my paternal AncestryDNA Clusters, but none for my maternal side.  Discussed it in My AncestryDNA Clusters Are Limited At This Time.  MyHeritageDNA now has 13,645 DNA matches (up 15 from 6 July) 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 74,640 profiles (down 7 from last week - I discovered some duplicate profiles and merged them) and 147,811 source citations (up 17).  

14) Wrote 22 Genea-Musings blog posts last week (Sunday through Saturday), of which one were a press release. The most viewed post last week was Ask AI: "Ten Interview Questions to Ask Abbey Ardelle "Della" (Smith) Carringer About Her Life Experiences, With Potential Answers" with over 132 views.  Genea-Musings had about 115,000 page views last week and over 1,176,000 views over the past month (lots of bots I fear). 

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.  Finished reading Soft Target by Stephen Hunter and started  Hot Springs by Stephen Hunter.  The Padres season continues and I watched seven games this week - they were 4-3 this past week (overall 52-44 now).  

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

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/07/randys-genealogy-pot-pourri-week-ending_0968344702.html

 

Copyright (c) 2025, 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.