Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 24 August 2025

Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 24 August 2025).  

1)  Hosted and moderated the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (CVGS) DNA Interest Group meeting on Zoom on Wednesday with 17 in attendance.  We discussed the East Coast Genetic Genealogy conference, MyHeritage stopping DNA uploads, and a Legacy Family Tree webinart by Paula Williams.  The discussion was about recent genealogy breakthroughs that resulted from DNA matches.

2)  Attended the August 17th Mondays With Myrt webinar.  We discussed Kelly Bennett's Gen Gernie AI toolo and the Quebec notarial record that Jill found.  The discussion question was "When is the right time to enter data into your genealogy management program?"

3)  Transcribed the 1828 Deed of Rudolph Spangler's heirs 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-GrandAunt Mary Carringer (1834-1908) of Pennsylvania, Iowa and Colorado 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 13 to 19 August 2025
• Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 14 to 20 August 2025
• Best of the Genea-Blogs - 17 to 23 August 2025

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

• ABC Biography of #47 Amy (Champlin) Oatley (1798-1865) of Rhode Island and Connecticut
• ABC Biography of #48 Henry Carringer (1800-1879) of Pennsylvania and Iowa

(AI ChatGPT5 image of Carringer family in 1848)

• Interview Questions And Answers For Rev. Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) About His Life Experiences
  
• Amy (Champlin) Oatley's Life Memories - An AI-Assisted Memoir

(AI ChatGPT4o image of the Oatley family  in 1840)

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: "What Was Life Like for Amy Champlin, Age 14, in 1812 in South Kingstown, Rhode Island?"

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 "John Auble's Legacy" -- A Family History Poem, Song, Audio Overview and Video Overview Created by Artificial Intelligence on Genea-Musings and Substack.

Also wrote a "Voices From the Past" poem and song using Grok 3 song lyrics and Suno.com - see  "Voices From the Past" - An AI-Assisted Poem and Song.

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: "The Encyclopedia Adventures."

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 49,744 DNA matches (up 71 from 16 August) with 2,106 "close" matches today (up 0), with four new ThruLines (3 probably wrong).  Added Notes to 4 Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic.  MyHeritageDNA now has 13,716 DNA matches (up 9 from 16 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 74,676 profiles (up 3 from last week)  and 147,850 source citations (up 2).  

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 The Watchful House on 30th Street Remembers: "The Encyclopedia Adventures" with over 290 views.  Genea-Musings had about 199,000 page views last week and over 695,000 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 and catch the beach ball out on the patio. Went to the grocery store on Monday and Friday.  Watched some of the Little Leagu e World Series games.  Still reading The Enemy Inside by Steve Martini.  The Padres season continues and I watched the six Padres games - they were 5-2 this past week (overall 74-57 now).  

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