Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 17 August 2025

 Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 17 August 2025).  

1)  Hosted and moderated the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (CVGS) Research Group meeting on Zoom on Wednesday with 17 in attendance.  We discussed ChatGPT5, Ancestry's acquisition of iMemories, Ancestry Club 1890, photo organization, ESM's new book, and reviewed the features on FamilySearch.  

2)  Attended the San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) British Isles Interest Group meeting on Zoom on Saturday. Colin Whitney presented "Tracing Your Ancestors Back to the British Isles."

3)  Transcribed the 1828 Deed Release of Daniel Small and Henry Welsh selling 200 acres of Donation land in Mercer County, Pennsylvania to Daniel Spangler for $1.  I transcribed it with the help of FamilySearch Full-Text Search.

4)  Wrote a genealogical sketch for 2nd Great-GrandUncle Cornelius A. Carringer (1834-1916) of Pennsylvania for the 52 Relatives theme.

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

• Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 6 to 12 August 2025
• Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 7 to 13 August 2025
• Best of the Genea-Blogs - 10 to 16 August 2025

6)  Wrote two "ABC Biographies" using my AI-assisted "Ancestor Biography Creation" process and two AI-assisted ancestor life memoir, and posted them on Genea-Musings and Substack, in:

• ABC Biography of #45 Miranda (Wade) White (1804-1850) of Rhode Island and Connecticut
• ABC Biography of #46 Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) of Rhode Island and Connecticut
  
• Jonathan White (1804-1850) Reminisces About His Life Experiences (AI-Assisted)
• Hannah (Sawtell) Hildreth's Life Memories - An AI-Assisted Memoir

                                              (image created by OpenAI ChatGPT4)

7)  Requested free AI tools to tell me about these genealogy and family history subjects, and posted them on Genea-Musings and Substack:

• Ask AI ChatGPT-5: "Please Tell Me About the Life Of Henrietta Hollwegs (1881-1978) ..."
• Ask AI Claude: "What Did My Father Do As A Life Insurance Agent From 1946 to 1971?"

8)  Requested free AI tools to create a poem, song lyrics and a podcast about my 3rd great-grandfather, Samuel Vaux (1816-1880) and had Suno.com create a song using the lyrics.  Posted the poem created by Claude Sonnet 4, the song lyrics created by X Grok 3, the Suno song link, and the ContentLM podcast and video overview link in "Samuel's Journey"-- A Family History Poem, Song, Audio Overview and Video Overview Created by Artificial Intelligence on Genea-Musings and Substack.

                                                 (image created by OpenAI ChatGPT4)

Also wrote an "I Am A Genealogist! song using Grok 3 song lyrics and Suno.com - see An AI-assisted Genealogy Song - "I Am A Genealogist!"

9)  Posted one of the AI-assisted memories of my ancestral home in the home's voice, based on my own memories, on Genea-Musings and Substack - see The Watchful House on 30th Street Remembers: "Randy's Radio Baseball Theater"

10)  Used Canva to create videos of several AI-assisted ancestor songs from Suno and several of the NotebookLM Podcasts.  Added those, and a number of the NotebookLM Videos, to my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@RandySeaver.  

11)  My AncestryDNA now has 49,673 DNA matches (up 37 from 9 August) with 2,106 "close" matches today (up 0), with six new ThruLines.  Added Notes to 6 Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic.  MyHeritageDNA now has 13,707 DNA matches (up 17 from 9 August) for me.  Reviewed the new DNA matches on AncestryDNA, MyHeritageDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.  

12)  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 74,673 profiles (up 12 from last week)  and 147,848 source citations (up 16).  

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 An AI-assisted Genealogy Song - "I Am A Genealogist!" with over 344 views.  Genea-Musings had about 44,200 page views last week and over 711,000 views over the past month (lots of bots I fear). 

14)  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 Trader of Secrets by Steve Martini and started The Enemy Inside by Steve Martini.  The Padres season continues and I watched the six Padres games - they were 3-3 this past week (overall 69-55 now).  

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