Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 10 August 2025

Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 10 August 2025).  

1)  Attended the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (CVGS) Board meeting on Zoom on Wednesday and discussed the Research Group, DNA Group and Newsletter.  Wrote, edited and published the August 2025 newsletter to the members via email (available for anyone to read on the CVGS website under "Newsletters"):

2)  Attended the San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) Program meeting on Zoom on Saturday. Elizabeth Swanay O'Neal presented "10 Places to Search for a Death Date...Without a Death Certificate" and "Research at the Library… Without Leaving Home!"

3)  Attended and was a panelist on the August 4th Mondays With Myrt show. The special guest was Barbara Tien discussing SEO and Substack, and we also discussed military records, the Stripped Down Guide... book, and organizing digital files.

4)  Attended the GeneaBloggers premium Peer Advisory Group Zoom meeting hosted by DearMyrtle.  We discussed getting readers and subscribers, plus using Substack.

5)  Transcribed the 1772 Bond of Michael Ruth Promising Money to George Ruth as part of the distribution of their father Peter Ruth's estate in Berks County, Pennsylvania.  I transcribed it myself because FamilySearch Full-Text Search and Ancestry.com didn't have it, but I found it in FamilySearch Digital Images.

6)  Wrote a genealogical sketch for 2nd Great-GrandUncle George W. Carringer (1832-about 1880) of Pennsylvania and Iowa 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 30 July to 5 August 2025
• Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 31 July to 6 August 2025
• Best of the Genea-Blogs - 3 to 9 August 2025

8)  Wrote two "ABC Biographies" using my AI-assisted "Ancestor Biography Creation" process and an AI-assisted ancestor Q&A, and posted them on Genea-Musings and Substack, in:

• ABC Biography of #44 Jonathan White (1804-1850) of Rhode Island and Connecticut
• ABC Biography of #43 Rebecca (Hill) Rich (1788-1862) of Hilperton, Wiltshire
• AI-assisted Ten Interview Questions and Answers Of Rebecca (Hill) Rich (1788-1862) About Her Life Experiences

                                              (image created by Google Gemini 2.5 Flash)

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

• Ask AI: "What Was Life Like for Rebecca Hill, Age 16, in 1805 in Hilperton, Wiltshire?"
• Ask AI: "Please Write a Short Story About Norman Seaver Returning Home After Lexington in 1775"

  (image created by Google Gemini 2.5 Flash)

10)  Requested free AI tools to create a poem, song lyrics and a podcast about my 3rd great-grandmother, Elizabeth (King) Spangler (1796-1863) 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 "Elizabeth's Loves"-- A Family History Poem, Song and Podcast Created by Artificial Intelligence on Genea-Musings and Substack.

                                                 (image created by OpenAI ChatGPT4)

11)  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: "The Great Bedroom Shuffle of 1955."

12)  Used Canva to create videos of several AI-assisted ancestor songs from Suno and several of the NotebookLM Podcasts.  Created more videos using Canva and added them to YouTube - see all of them on my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@RandySeaver.  

13)  My AncestryDNA now has 49,636 DNA matches (up 17 from 2 August) with 2,106 "close" matches today (up 0), with no new ThruLines.  Added Notes to 2 Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic.  MyHeritageDNA now has 13,690 DNA matches (up 0 from 2 August) for me.  Reviewed the new DNA matches on AncestryDNA, MyHeritageDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.  

14)  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 74,661 profiles (down 1 from last week)  and 147,832 source citations (up 2).  

15) Wrote 20 Genea-Musings blog posts last week (Sunday through Saturday), of which one was a press release. The most viewed post last week was The Watchful House on 30th Street Remembers: "The Great Bedroom Shuffle of 1955" with over 228 views.  Genea-Musings had about 110,000 page views last week and over 842,000 views over the past month (lots of bots I fear). 

16)  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. The backyard fence repair was completed.  Finished reading Hot Springs by Stephen Hunter and started Trader of Secrets by Steve Martini.  The Padres season continues and I watched the six Padres games - they were 4-2 this past week (overall 66-52 now).  

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