Thursday, January 2, 2025

Randy's Artificial Intelligence and Genealogy Posts in 2024

 It took awhile for me to really jump into experimenting with Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to genealogy and family history issues, but I did quite a few blog posts in 2024 once I got started using just the FREE AI tools.

Here is the list of my 2024 Genea-Musings blog posts that touched on Artificial Intelligence:

1)  Genealogy-Related Questions of AI Tools:  

2)  Ancestral Poems and Songs Created by AI:

I have several more songs online at Suno.com - you can play any or all of them at   https://suno.com/@skeletalvenue315. 

3)  Use of Ancestry AI Features:

4)  Use of MyHeritage AI Features:

5)  Use of FamilySearch AI Features:

    6)  Use of Emulate Me AI Features:

      7)  Randy's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Posts Concerning AI Features:

      8)  Information about Artificial Intelligence tools for doing genealogy and family history are posted on my Artificial Intelligence Compendium page here.  In addition to my own work listed above, there is:
      •  a list of free and subscription AI tools, 
      • a list of available custom ChatGPT prompts, 
      • a list of useful genealogy and AI websites, 
      • a list of webinars and videos about AI and genealogy, 
      • a list of blog posts by other geneabloggers about AI and genealogy. 
      ================================================


      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.  All comments are moderated.

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      Treasure Chest Thursday - 1696 Marriage Record for Percival Hall and Jane Willis Woburn or Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony

       It's Treasure Chest Thursday - an opportunity to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history research and genealogy musings.

      The treasure today is the 1696 marriage record of Percival Hall and Jane Willis in Woburn or Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony records:


      The 1696 marriage entry for Percival Hall and Jane Willis is in the Hall entries:


      The transcription of the information on this record is:

      "HALL, Percival (-1752) & Jane WILLIS/WILLOWES (1677-); 2 Feb 1696; Woburn/Cambridge"

      The source citation for this census record is:

      "U.S. New England Marriages Prior to 1700," imaged, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com), page 335, Percival Hall and Jane Willis marriage entry, Woburn/Cambridge, Mass., 2 Feb 1696; Original data from Torrey, Clarence A., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore, MD : Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004)

      This is a Derivative Source record (because it is a compilation of information copied from an original town record book) with Primary Information and Direct Evidence of the names, place and marriage date of Percival Hall and Jane Willis.

      Percival Hall (1672-1752), son of John and Elizabeth (Greene) Hall, was born 11 February 1671 in Medford, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and died 25 December 1752 in Sutton, Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He married Jane Willis (1677-1757), daughter of Thomas and Grace (Tay) Willis, born 9 April 1677 in Woburn, Massachusetts Bay Colony, died 28 October 1757 in Sutton, Massachusetts Bay Colony.  They had at least 12 children.

      Percival Hall and Jane Willis are my 7th great-grandparents, through their daughter Jane Hall (1700-1769) who married Jonas Rice (1707-1793) in Worcester, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1728.
         
                                         ===========================================

      Disclosure:  I have a paid All-Access subscription to Ancestry.com now.  Ancestry.com has provided a complimentary subscription and material considerations for travel expenses to meetings, and has hosted events and meals that I have attended in Salt Lake City, in past years.


      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.  All comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately after posting.

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      Wednesday, January 1, 2025

      Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 26 December 2024 to 1 January 2025

       Welcome to Genealogy Education Bytes, posted on Wednesday afternoon for the past week, where we try to highlight some of the most important genealogy and family history education items that came across my desktop since the last issue.


      1) Upcoming Conferences and  Institutes 

      * Conference Keeper Calendar

      *  RootsTech 2025 (Free/$$) - 6-8 March 2025 - Virtual (Free) and In-Person ($$) (Salt Lake City, Utah)

      *  Australasian Conference 2025 - Connections: Past, Present, Future ($$) - 21-24 March 2025 - In-Person (Brisbane, Australia)

      *   OGS 2025 Conference "Light Up Your Genealogy" ($$) - 30 April to 3 May 2025 - In-Person (Sandusky, Ohio)

      *  NGS 2025 Family History Conference "Tales & Trails" ($$) - 23-25 May 2025 - In-Person (Louisville, Ky.)

      2 ) Upcoming Seminars, Webinars and Online Classes (times are US Pacific):

      * Conference Keeper Calendar - has many links to register for and/or view webinars and classes.

      *  FamilySearch Library Classes and Webinars (Free)

      *  GenWebinars ($$)

      *  THE Family History Show ($$) - 8 February 2025 - Online


      *  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Wednesday, 8 January, 5 p.m.:  Genealogy Meets AI: Panel Discussion by Geoff Rasmussen.

      *  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Friday, 10 January, 11 a.m.:  Researching in Yorkshire by Jude Rhodes.

      *  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Tuesday, 11 January, 11 a.m.:  MyHeritage: Your Family Stories are Just One Click Away by Melissa Barker.

      3) Recent Podcasts:


      *  Family Tree:  Timberrrr!!!



      *  Weekly Genealogy Toolkit:  What's next?

      4) Recent YouTube Videos:

      *  Aimee Cross - Genealogy Hints:  Narrow Down Ancestry Hints | Search Hints By Record Group

      *  Allen County Public Library: History in Brief: The Life of a Civil War Soldier


      *  Family History on the AI Fast Track:  This New Ancestry Feature Makes ThruLines EASIER Than Ever




      *  Legacy Tree Genealogists:  There's No Such Thing as a "Boring" Ancestor  



      *  WikiTree:  

      *  Write Your Family History With Devon Noel Lee:  

      5) Did you miss the last post in this series - Genealogy Education Bytes -  19 to 25 December 2024?

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

      NOTE:  If  I miss something important, please let me know in a comment or an email. 

      The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/01/genealogy-education-bytes-week-of-26.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 your comment on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at   randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. 

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      MyHeritage’s 2024 in Review!

       I received this from Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage today:

       ==============================

      As we step into 2025, I wanted to share our 2024 Year in Review blog post with you: a celebration of the incredible milestones MyHeritage achieved this past year. From groundbreaking new features to remarkable discoveries made by our users, it’s been an unforgettable journey, all thanks to the amazing MyHeritage community!

      Here are a few highlights:
      MyHeritage End of the year infographic

      The full blog post dives into these achievements and more: read it here.

      Wishing you a happy and successful 2025!

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

      Disclosure: I receive a complimentary subscription to MyHeritage, and have received other material consideration in past years. I uploaded my autosomal DNA raw data to their DNA product. This does not affect my objective analysis of MyHeritage products. I am a paid subscriber to Family Tree Webinars and love it.

      The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/01/myheritages-2024-in-review.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 Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.

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      FamilySearch Full-Text Search Update -- 1 January 2025

       I've always been a numbers guy, so when a database like FamilySearch's Full-Text Search comes along, I wonder if it is growing slowly or quickly.

      The good news is -- It's still growing quickly, like every week it adds new record collections and millions of records.  But how quickly?

      Here is the Full-Text Search home page:

      The user can use the search fields to search for keywords, a name, a location (pick from a list), and a year range (e.g. 1776-2024).  

      Or, the user can search for a specific collection using the "Find a Collection" search field.

      There is a link to "Browse All Collections" which provides a list of the available collections.  When I click that, and select "Records" I can see:


      It says there are 3,485 collections today (up 11 (+0.32%) from last week), and the list above by is sorted by the "Last Updated" date.  Clicking on "Collection Title" will provide an alphabetical collection list, and clicking on "Records" will provide the list by most records.   

      I wanted to know which collection had the most images - this week it is "United States, New York, Migrations, from 1901 to 2013" with 55,642,353 images.  Here is the list of the collections with the most records (images?):


      I want to know how many records (images?) there are on Full-Text Search.  I added the year range "1961-2024" and saw:

      I had to do this four times to get the full count of images using ranges from 1500 to 1800, 1801-1900, 1901-1960, and 1961-2024, and then adding them up.

      That gives me all Records (Images?) of 1,295,640,256  (up 80,506,560 - up 6.625% - from last week)

      What about "Results" by Country?  When I added "United States" to the Place field, I clicked and saw this for the year range 1600-1800:


      I had to break the year range into four groups to get answers and add them up.

      It found 1,293,871,227 results (up  165,272,142 - up 14.64% - from last week) for "United States."  Since I used a "Place" search term, that probably mean the number of matches to the "Place" term on the available indexed images.  

      Doing a similar test for different countries, I made this list today:

      *  England = 20,552,215
      *  Ireland = 15,015,550
      *  Wales =  567,260
      *  Scotland = 985,365
      *  Canada = 46,199,595
      *  Mexico = 10,410,251
      *  Australia = 16,800,674
      *  New Zealand = 6,749,728
      *  France = 7,707,564
      *  Germany = 12,893,324
      *  Poland = 3,896,130
      *  Sweden = 3,593,294
      *  Norway = 2,893,378
      *  Denmark = 1,856,783

      Note that some of the "Results" numbers may not be for records in the stated Place (e.g., "France" might be a town in the USA).

      When I looked for these numbers last week on 25 December 2024, I found:

      *  Number of collections:  3,474
      *  Number of "Results" (with no search terms):   1,215,133,696

      So the increase over the last week for Full-Text Search is:

      *  Number of collections:  up 11 (up 0.32%)
      *  Number of "Results" with no search terms: up 80,506,560  (up 6.625%) 

      It appears that they added many records to existing collections.

      The FamilySearch Images collection has 5,572.9 million images as I write this (an increase of 2.9 million, up 0.052% from last week). 

      Lastly, we know that Full-Text Search is using the "Images" collection on FamilySearch to add them to Full-Text Search, to keyword index them, and to transcribe them.  So Full-Text Search has about 23.2% of the "Images" collection processed as of today.

      This is a Benchmark for 1 January 2025.  Let's see how quickly the numbers grow over the next few months.  

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

      The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/01/familysearch-full-text-search-update-1.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, Bluesky, 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. 

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      RootsMagic Genealogy Family Tree Statistics Update - 1 January 2025

       I was curious to see how much progress I had made in my family tree during the last 12 months.

      Here is the family tree database summary from RootsMagic 10 on 31 December 2024:


      Here are the "numbers" from 31 December 2023 in my RootsMagic database (with increases from 1 January 2023):

      *  73,962 persons (+ 2,155)
      *  29.976 families  (+ 902)
      *  231,476 events  (+ 6,240)
      *  15,358 Alternate names (+ 336)
      *  21,164 places (+ 2,016)  
      *  2,286 sources ( + 59)
      *  147,325 citations (+ 922)
      *  1,265 Multi-media Items (+ 3)
      *  3,211 Multi-media links (+ 2)
      *  52,213 Persons matched to FamilySearch Family Tree persons (+ 2,001)

      In the past 12 months, I've averaged adding 5.9 persons, 2.5 families, 17.0 events and 2.5 source citations each day.  I try to work at least an hour in the evening adding content and sources to the database, although baseball and the holidays intervened.

       Consequently, this year   managed to reduce my  citations per person from 2.04 to 1.99, and my  citations per event from 0.650 to 0.636 this past year.  I don't have a citation for every event, name or relationship, and in some cases I have more than one citation for an event, name or relationship.  Obviously, I have added more profiles and events with no or only a few source citations.

      2)  I added 2,155 persons to my database in 2024 (+ 3.0%).  Some are in my 4th great-grandparents' descendant lines (including lines to DNA matches with known common ancestors), some are in my one-name studies, and some are from further and ongoing research on my ancestral families.        My one-name studies include Seaver (with variations Sever, Seever, Sevier and plurals), Carringer, Auble, Vaux, Dill, and Buck in my tree, and McKnew in my wife's tree.

      By far, the most new research was done in finding the ancestry of my 4th great-grandmother, Mary (Partridge) Feather (1792-1853).    


      3)  I "mine" and search new Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, and FamilySearch databases and use RootsMagic WebHints for my ancestral and one-name study surnames, and add content and source citations.  I add or correct name, relationship, date and place omissions or errors found while working on the database.  I use RootsMagic to match my tree profiles to the FamilySearch Family Tree profiles, and exchange source-verified information both ways on a near-daily basis.

      4)  I stopped d      oing the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge after 10 years in 2024.  I finished writing genealogical sketches for my ancestors from my parents to the 7th great-grandparents by ancestor chart numbers (although I skipped those for whom my research and/or reliable information is poor or non-existent).  

      However, I decided to do a similar weekly challenge - 52 Relatives in 52 Weeks because the siblings of my ancestors deserve a genealogical sketch, and in most cases, don't have a sketch or life story in online collaborative trees.  The 52 Relatives posts are also in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks page.  When I post a new sketch, I add the update the Notes and Sources to the person profile in RootsMagic and also to the FamilySearch Family Tree and WikiTree profile for that person.  I will continue this weekly challenge because it helps me focus on one specific relative, and their family, each week and improves my database and my family history.

      5)  Another significant effort in 2024 was to convert current place names to historical place names as required.  As an example, Medfield, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States was Medfield, Suffolk County, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America before 1776.  In the process, I'm taking the opportunity to refresh my Notes and Sources for my ancestors, and adding short biographicval sketches listing my "current thinking" to the ancestor's Note.  This is a big task and I'm about 3% done. 

      6)  My conclusion is:  I've made steady progress, and I'm actively improving my database in both quantity and quality, but still have a long way to go to have a "fully sourced and accurate" family tree.  It's better than it was, but it can still be improved.  It is truly a lifelong task, I think!        I really need a genealogy clone or assistant.  I doubt that Siri, Alexa, Google Home or any other virtual assistant is yet capable of doing genealogy research, source citations, etc.;  I know that Artificial Intelligence is not able to do actual research, but it can help document submitted information.

       7)  I updated my Genea-Musings readers on the "numbers" in my RootsMagic genealogy family tree database over the years in:

      *  RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 1 January 2024

      *  RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 1 January 2023

      *  My RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 1 January 2022

      *  My RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 1 January 2021

      *  My RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 31 December 2019

      *  My RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 31 December 2018


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


      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. Note that all comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.

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