Randy's Genealogy Pot-Pourri - Week Ending 18 October 2026

 Here are the highlights of my family history and genealogy related activities over the past week (ending Sunday, 18 October 2026). 

1)   Hosted andm oderated the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (CVGS) Research Group Meeting on Zoom on Wednesday. I reported on AncestryDNA Ethnicity Estimates (Origins), Fold3 Revolutionary War Pension Files Full-Text Search feature, RootsMagic Version 12 release, RootsTech 2027 registration is open, All About That Place podcasts and videos, interesting Family Tree Magazine and Thomas MacEntee articles, new genealogy books, and my own work.  The discussion topic was “What new research technique, or research tool  have you learned in the past year?”

2) Attended the San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) British Isles Interest Group (with Colin Whitney) and AI for Genealogy (with Doug Shaw) Group meetings on Zoom on Saturday.

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

• Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 7 to 13 October 2026
• Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 8 to 14 October 2026
• Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of 11 to 17 October 2026
• Listed new and updated record collections for MyHeritage, Findmypast, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch.

4)  Transcribed the 1752 Deed of Benjamin Wing buying land in Dartmouth, Massachusetts from Thomas Briggs for Amanuensis Monday with help from FamilySearch Full-Text Search.

5)  Wrote one Life Memoir for an ancestor, and posted it on Genea-Musings and  Substack:

• Life Memoir of Zachariah Hildreth (1728-1784) of Westford, Massachusetts

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

• The Life Of the Jonathan White Family of East Killingly, Connecticut in 1845 (17 October 2026)
  
• The Life of Ann Marshman of Hilperton, Wiltshire at Age 11 in 1795 (16 October 2026)
• The 1826 Courtship and Marriage of Elizabeth Dill and Alpheus Smith in Massachusetts (15 October 2026)
• The Horses of Henry Carringer’s Pennsylvania Farm, 1850-1851 (12 October 2026)
  

7)  Wrote an AI-assisted short story about my parents lives and romance on Genea-Musings and Substack:

• Betty and Fred’s Story: Building a Life Together -- Parallel Lives, November 1944
  

8)  Wrote an AI-assisted short story about my maternal grandparents lives and romance on Genea-Musings and Substack:

• Emily and Lyle’s Story: September to Early November 1918 

9)  Housekeeping -- updated my Randy's AI and Genealogy page and added to the AI-assisted story  compendiums. Added a number of the recent Google Notebook Videos to my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@RandySeaver (now 513 videos).

10)  Found some more information about my grandsons' Italian and Danish heritage, and emailed an ancestor report, a pedigree chart and some records for them.

11)  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 75,161 profiles (up 10 from last week)  and 148,188 source citations (up 5).  

12)  My AncestryDNA test now has 52,655 DNA matches (up 59 from last week) with 2,231 "close" matches (20 cM or more) today (up 2), with 3 new ThruLines.  Added Notes to no Matches, and added no new DNA match lines to RootsMagic. MyHeritageDNA test now has 15,032 DNA matches (up 14 from last week) for me, with 26 Theories of Family Relativity.  

13) Wrote 20 Genea-Musings blog posts last week (Sunday through Saturday), of which two were a press release. The most viewed post last week was Added and Updated FamilySearch Record Collections - Week of 26 September to 2 October 2026 with over 1,850 more views.  Genea-Musings had about 487,000 page views last week and over 1,698,000 views over the past month (lots of bots I think). 

14)  Real life events:  Visited Linda several days this past week at her memory care facility.  Went to the grocery store on Monday and Friday. Attended the Rohr Engineers lunch on Thursday. Finished reading  A Cold Heart by Jonathan Kellerman and started Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.  Watched the Chargers game and they lost 22-6 to the Kansas City Chiefs so now 0-6).

NOTE:  I spent about 30 hours on these genealogy activities this week,  learned quite a bit, and had some genealogy fun!

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