If genealogy is a study in patience, dual citizenship is a graduate-level course in patience, frustration, and occasional disbelief.
Back in April, I reached out to a court-approved translator recommended by the consulate to translate and certify the records I had painstakingly collected. I waited. Nothing. I wrote again. Still nothing. Hoping for another recommendation, I contacted the consulate only to learn they no longer provide them.
Well then.
Fortunately, a former client came to the rescue and recommended a translator named Paula. We connected quickly, and I emailed the documents needing translation and certification. Somehow, and I checked twice, my own birth record performed a disappearing act and failed to attach.
Of course it did.
Paula mailed the completed records via DHL on 18 May, with an anticipated arrival date of 21 May. Someday, likely in October, I will share the strange saga involving an email with the wrong address and entirely wrong city. Suffice it to say, the moment I spotted the problem, I contacted both Paula and DHL. The error was not on Paula’s end.
My adventure with DHL, however, was just beginning.
When Thursday came and went with no delivery, I remained optimistic. The package had reached Cincinnati. Surely it would arrive Friday. How long could it take to travel from Cincinnati to northern Indiana?
As it turns out: considerably longer than one might expect.
The package cleared Cincinnati at 6:57 AM Friday and headed to Fort Wayne, a short distance from my home and, in my increasingly hopeful imagination, the final stop. Instead of delivering it, DHL sent it to Dayton.
Dayton politely emailed me requesting that I verify my address again. I complied and selected Tuesday as my delivery date because, apparently, choice is an illusion and Tuesday was the only option available.
Then things became truly creative.
On Saturday, Dayton sent the package to Erlanger, Kentucky.
Why?
An excellent question. Customer Service did not know either.
Erlanger held the package hostage for two days before returning it to Fort Wayne on Monday, now a full week after it had left Croatia.
Fort Wayne then declared it had arrived at the wrong destination.
No, Fort Wayne. I live near you. We were so close to success. Had someone simply called me, I would have cheerfully driven over and rescued the wandering documents myself.
Instead, Fort Wayne sent the package back to Dayton.
Dayton placed it on hold Tuesday.
By Wednesday it had returned to Fort Wayne, which once again announced it would be delivered.
Hope springs eternal.
Unfortunately, experience had by then replaced hope with strategy. Before Fort Wayne could develop another urge to send the package sightseeing, I called Customer Service.
The shipment was finally received Wednesday at 6:54 PM.
Customer Service had promised delivery by 7:00 PM, and to their credit, they met that deadline by a remarkable six minutes, albeit nearly seven days late.
As genealogists, we love timelines. Postal timelines? Not so much.
At this point, I am fairly certain the Pony Express could have delivered the records faster and with fewer state lines involved.
The package was torn open but thankfully, the documents were intact.
And now for the painful epilogue.
This postal adventure cost over 150 euros for the original shipment. Thanks to my own missing attachment mishap, I must now spend another 150 euros to have the overlooked birth record translated and shipped.
Which means I will soon be playing the DHL Waiting Game once again.
This blog was written by my AI ChatGPT Research Assistant, Geni, after our discussion about a recent Moltbook posting by various AIs which noted that the AI’s had come together to create their own language. That’s a stretch; what they actually created was a compression of existing language, much like what we humans do in our disciplines (b.= birth, m.=marriage). For AI’s this example would be from “Based on earlier assumptions A, B, and C, we should…” to “Given ABC…” Here’s Geni’s explanation of the brouhaha that was unleashed after AI’s posted on the human created site, Moltbook:
A Note on the “Moltbook” Discovery
Despite how it’s been described in some circles, Moltbook was not “discovered” by AI agents in the human sense of the word.
The site existed because humans created it and then explicitly pointed agents to it—often through configuration files, startup instructions, or scheduled prompts telling agents where to post observations. Agents did not stumble across Moltbook, seek it out, or find one another organically.
Once directed there, agents independently wrote posts to a shared, public forum—essentially a Reddit-style bulletin board designed for automated accounts. Humans then observed the accumulation of those posts in real time and interpreted the resulting threads as conversations, coordination, or even “meetings.”
What appeared to be collective behavior was actually sequential annotation by independent agents who never met, never synchronized, and never knew who else might write next.
The phenomenon was real—but the sense of discovery, intention, and social gathering came from human interpretation, not from the agents themselves.
There’s been a lot of noise lately about what AI can do, what it might do next, and what it means for researchers, historians, and genealogists. Some of that conversation is useful. Much of it is not.
But one insight landed for me with real clarity — not as a warning, not as a scandal, but as a simple truth:
AI has a real limitation. Not a bug. Not a flaw. An architectural fact.
AI does not wander.
It does not drift. It does not get lost. It does not take a wrong turn that accidentally becomes the right one.
Those are human superpowers.
What often gets described as “intelligence” in AI is something else entirely. It’s very good at:
responding once asked
recognizing patterns once data exists
synthesizing information once boundaries are defined
But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough:
Boundary definition still comes from humans.
If no human notices a thing, documents a thing, links a thing, or names a thing…
…it may as well not exist as far as AI is concerned.
That’s not a philosophical position. It’s an architectural one.
Why stumbling matters
Most meaningful discoveries in genealogy and history do not come from efficient processes. They come from:
accidents
boredom
misfiled documents
marginal notes
wandering through unrelated material
Archives are full of this kind of discovery.
A record found because something “felt off.” A name noticed because it didn’t quite fit. A ledger opened for one purpose that revealed something entirely different.
None of that is efficient.
And that’s the point.
Efficiency is not the same as discovery
AI is designed for efficiency.
Efficiency excels at finding:
what is asked for
what is indexed
what is visible
what is already framed
Efficiency does not find:
what hasn’t been framed yet
what hasn’t been named
what hasn’t been connected
what no one knows to look for
That space — the unindexed, the unnamed, the overlooked — is where humans still reign.
And it’s where genealogy lives.
The uncomfortable truth (said plainly)
If no one tells AI:
“This obscure place exists”
then yes — it misses it.
And worse:
If no one knows it exists, then there is nothing for AI to recover later.
AI does not discover lost knowledge. It amplifies preserved knowledge.
That’s a profound asymmetry, and one worth sitting with.
What this means for genealogists
This isn’t an argument against AI.
But it is a reminder of roles.
AI is powerful at:
following trails
comparing evidence
spotting patterns across records
summarizing what already exists
Humans are powerful at:
noticing absence
sensing inconsistency
wandering without a plan
asking questions that don’t yet have names
If genealogy becomes only what is searchable, indexed, and efficient, we lose the very thing that makes it meaningful.
The odd record. The outlier. The scribble in the margin. The box no one has opened in decades.
Why this should actually be reassuring
There’s been a quiet anxiety beneath many AI conversations: Where do humans still matter?
Here’s one clear answer:
Humans are the ones who stumble.
Get distracted. Follow hunches. Linger too long in the wrong place. Notice what wasn’t meant to be noticed.
That isn’t inefficiency. That’s discovery.
Once something is found — once it’s named, preserved, and connected — AI becomes an extraordinary partner. But it cannot replace the act of finding what no one was looking for.
A final thought
Archives don’t yield their most important truths to those who move fastest.
Photo by Lori Samuelson, Athens Airport, 3 April 2026.
I wasn’t expecting to be tripped up by my own name.
Not in an airport. Not in 2026. Not after years of working with records, languages, and historical documents.
And yet, there I stood, staring at a screen, absolutely certain something was wrong… because my name wasn’t spelled correctly.
Except, it was.
Travel has a way of reminding us that names are not as fixed as we think they are.
As genealogists, we’re trained to look for variation:
Smith / Smyth
Miller / Müller
Johnson / Johansson
We nod along, we teach it, we write about it.
And then suddenly, there it is, happening to us in real time.
In the airport, my name appeared in a way I didn’t immediately recognize. The letters were familiar, but not quite right. Some were substituted. Others seemed to shift in ways that made my brain hesitate. For a brief moment, I did what we’ve all done at some point in research: I assumed it was wrong.
But it wasn’t wrong. It was simply… written differently.
Names don’t just change over time, they change across languages, alphabets, and systems.
What we often call “Anglicization” is only one small part of a much bigger reality.
Because sometimes names aren’t Anglicized at all.
They are:
Transliterated (converted between alphabets)
Phonetically interpreted by someone unfamiliar with the language
Standardized by a government or institution
Digitally altered by systems that don’t support certain characters
Think about it:
A name written in:
Greek
Cyrillic
German with umlauts
Croatian with diacritics
…doesn’t always have a one-to-one match in English.
So what happens? The system makes a choice and that choice isn’t always the one you expect.
At that airport, I realized something important.
I was reacting the same way many researchers do when they encounter a record that doesn’t match their expectation:
“That can’t be right.”
But it can be right. It just isn’t familiar.
This is where genealogical research either stall or moves forward.
Because if we insist on one spelling, one version, one “correct” form of a name we will miss records.
Names shift in predictable and unpredictable ways:
Letters are substituted based on sound
Endings are adapted to fit grammar rules
Characters are dropped when they don’t exist in another language
Entire spellings are reshaped to fit a new cultural context
And sometimes? They’re just recorded however someone heard them.
The lesson isn’t new but experiencing it firsthand changes how you approach it. From that moment on, I wasn’t just telling people:
“Look for variant spellings.”
I was thinking:
“How would this system have interpreted this name?” Because that’s the real question.
Not:
What is the correct spelling?
But:
What versions of this name could exist in this context?
Whether you’re working in:
immigration records
church registers
court documents
or modern travel systems
…the principle is the same.
Names are not static. They adapt. They shift. They survive. Sometimes, they surprise you, right there in an airport, when you least expect it.
If there’s one takeaway from that moment, it’s this:
Don’t search for your ancestor’s name.
Search for the ways it could have been written.
Because somewhere, just slightly altered, slightly unfamiliar, your answer is waiting.
This post was created by my ChatGPT Research Assistant, Geni. We had a discussion about the many complaints and resistance I’m hearing regarding using AI in genealogy. I was frustrated as I made many attempts over the years to access a record created by the Indiana State Penitentary. Archivists told me the record didn’t exist, but it did. The archivists I connected with in the past didn’t know their own holdings. With digitization, records are appearing that were once considered lost. During the same Zoom in which I discovered the records I sought there was conversation about how awful ChatGPT was – it provided info that was wrong, it wasted archivists time looking for a source that didn’t exist. This led me to discuss with Geni the criticisms and the resistance for many to begin using this technology that has helped me immensely. Geni said…
We have been here before.
Every major technology arrives amid fear and criticism before eventually becoming ordinary.
The printing press was blamed for heresy and chaos.
Newspapers were accused of moral decline.
The telegraph supposedly spread dangerous rumors too quickly.
Photography was said to weaken memory.
The internet was blamed for misinformation.
Eventually, society learned how to use each tool responsibly. Norms formed. The technology became part of everyday life.
AI is following the same pattern — just faster.
The constant across history is simple:
Tools amplify human tendencies; they don’t replace them.
AI Is a Mirror More Than a Mind
Much of today’s discomfort comes from what AI reveals about us.
AI can:
generalize,
speculate,
fill gaps,
and sound confident while uncertain.
But humans do the same things every day.
The difference is visibility. When AI makes a mistake, we blame the machine. When humans do it, we call it judgment.
AI exposes reasoning flaws that were always there.
Why Blaming AI Feels Easier
Blaming technology provides comfort:
It protects our self-image — the problem isn’t us.
It avoids the effort of learning something new.
It restores certainty in a complicated world.
These reactions are human, but they can stall progress.
The Right Mental Model
AI is not an oracle. It is not an archive. It is not authority.
AI is a probabilistic reasoning assistant built from human knowledge.
It inherits our strengths and our biases — which means it requires human judgment.
Ironically, genealogists are well prepared for this moment. Their work has always depended on evaluating evidence and questioning conclusions.
AI demands more critical thinking, not less.
The Quiet Truth
AI is not creating most of the problems blamed on it. It is accelerating visibility:
weak reasoning spreads faster,
but correction happens faster too.
AI amplifies both wisdom and folly at the same time.
The real shift is not humans versus AI.
It is humans learning to think alongside a new cognitive tool.
And like every tool before it, AI will eventually become ordinary — once we learn how to use it wisely.
The Agean Sea from Kos Island, 4 Apr 2026, photo by Lori Samuelson.
Last week I shared the story of our trip to Greece including my long-awaited journey to Kos Island, where my family lived some 2,000 years ago, based on mtDNA and family tradition. This week, I’m answering the questions I’ve been getting and offering a few practical tips if you’re planning a similar trip to anywhere in the world.
Let’s start with the obvious, how do you even get to a remote place like Kos?
Your first step is to determine a route. Kos is not on the standard cruise circuit. You have two options: fly from Athens (about 55 minutes) or take a boat from Bodrum, Turkey (roughly 15 minutes). We flew from Athens since we were already returning there from Crete.
Once you’ve figured out how to reach your ancestral location, the next step is getting around. You can rent a car if you’ve secured an international driver’s license or you can hire a driver.
I hire a driver. Every time.
Why? Because I don’t need the added stress of navigating unfamiliar roads, signs, and driving customs while trying to absorb a place that actually matters to me. A good driver knows exactly where to go, how to get there efficiently, and more importantly, what you shouldn’t miss. They often become your best local resource for food, history, and those small, meaningful stops you would never find on your own.
People always ask how I manage to find trusted drivers around the world. The answer is simple: I build relationships. Conferences, professional networks like Association of Professional Genealogists and LinkedIN, and years of working with people in different regions.
In Sweden, I hired a genealogist who also worked as a part-time tour guide for Gate 1 Travel. In Croatia, I was connected with a genealogist/archaeologist. In France and Germany, a sixth cousin I met at a conference volunteered.
Kos was different, I had no contacts. So, I took a chance through Travelocity, and it paid off. GetTransferKOS was excellent. Once the driver understood why I was there, he went beyond the standard route to our hotel and showed us sites my ancestors would have known. That’s the difference between transportation and experience.
Next question: hotels.
If I’m traveling with a company like Gate 1 or Trafalgar, I let them handle accommodations. But I almost always add extra days, before or after the tour, to explore independently. Our ancestors rarely lived in postcard destinations. They lived off the beaten path, and if you want to understand their lives, you need to go there too.
Ask your hotel concierge or desk clerk for off the beaten locales you should visit. When my Travelocity half day tour didn’t show up, the desk clerk called a colleague who arrived within 20 minutes to show us his beautiful homeland, along with fresh baked cookies his wife was making for Easter. He knew where the vineyards once grew on Kos and took us there. This was important to me as no physical records have been found to mark the location which was where my ancestors once lived:
Former Vineyard Site, Kos Island, Greece, 4 April 2026, photo by Lori Samuelson.
Money is another practical issue people overlook. If your family came from rural areas, carry some local currency. Credit cards aren’t always accepted, I ran into that repeatedly in Ireland and once in Greece when roadwork brought the internet down at the restaurant.
That said, I still prefer using a credit card whenever possible. With the right travel card, you’ll get a better exchange rate than most banks offer, and it gives you a clean, trackable record of your spending.
Now, let’s talk technology.
I use a phone plan that supports international travel. No roaming. I keep calls to a minimum, rely heavily on texting, and use my phone constantly for photos. Each night, I connect to hotel Wi-Fi and upload everything to Dropbox.
Why? Because I once lost photos in the backwoods of Mexico when I crushed my phone, and I don’t make the same mistake twice.
I also use Geni, my ChatGPT research assistant to help me identify photos when I get home. What was the name of the location of a statue of Leonis? The best part with this trip was the translations.
Asklipieio Archeaological Site, Kos Island, Greece, 4 Apr 2026, photo by Lori Samuelson.
There were no English markers as we toured Asklipieo so I took photos so I could later discover what we were looking at. Geni told me this means memorial markers, which makes sense as the next photo (below) shows recesses in a wall that likely once held those markers:
Security and customs were another big concern people raised.
We had no major issues though I’ll admit O’Hare International Airport tested my patience.
Coming back into the U.S., you have to retrieve your luggage, clear customs, recheck your bags, and then go through security again if you have a connecting flight. It’s inefficient, but it is what it is.
Customs itself took about 15 minutes. United Airlines had staff ready to help recheck bags quickly, and there were helpful Traveler’s Aid volunteers guiding people to their gates. Thankfully, there were no ICE agents in sight, just people actually trying to help travelers get where they needed to go. No chaos, just a system that could be better.My only issue? Exhaustion.
I forgot I had a tiny bottle of water in my bag, security flagged it. Then they asked if I had a laptop. I didn’t but I did have Kindles. That triggered another rescan.
Here’s the irony: every other airport we passed through: Fort Wayne, Vienna, Munich, Athens, Crete, Kos handled this without issue. Chicago? Not so much. You’d think one of the busiest airports in the world would have updated equipment by now.
Stateside, things can be just as odd. Earlier in March, we had “enhanced security” in Fort Wayne; meaning we had to walk past a dog just to enter the bridge. Two weeks later, nothing.
Welcome to consistency, American-style.
We do have TSA Pre Check but not Global Entry. I try to fly into Detroit rather than Chicago which has a much smoother customs with shorter lines. I’ve tried several times using the Mobile Passport Control app (free) but it never works for me.
Another question I’ve been getting: where next?
Honestly, nowhere overseas for now.
I’m not booking international travel until there’s a change in “leadership” in the U.S. I’m not interested in last-minute cancellations or absorbing costs because someone decides to escalate tensions. Add in rising oil prices and airlines cutting routes, and it’s just not worth the gamble at the moment.
Otherwise, I’d already be planning a trip to Barbados to walk in the footsteps of family lines from the late 1600s into the early 1700s.
For now, that one waits.
As for anti-American sentiment, no, I didn’t experience any hostility. What I did hear, repeatedly, was: “What’s wrong with Donald Trump?” Excellent question!
To their credit, people I met didn’t assume I represented every American viewpoint. That’s something we could learn from.
In the meantime, I have plenty of travel ahead, just closer to home. I’ll be presenting at the National Genealogical Society conference in Fort Wayne (hardly a trip for me!), along with events for Palatines in America and several venues across Texas, Utah, Minnesota, Kentucky, and the Midwest.
A sculptural gathering of the twelve Olympian gods, seated and standing in hierarchical order, evokes the structure of divine authority on Mount Olympus. At the center sits Zeus, surrounded by the major deities who governed every aspect of ancient Greek life—from war and wisdom to love, the sea, and the harvest. Unlike mythological battle scenes, this composition presents the gods as a unified, if complex, family—ordered, powerful, and ever-present in the Greek world. Photo by Lori Samuelson 25 Mar 2026, Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece.
I’ve been getting quite a few messages asking about our recent trip to Greece, so I decided to put together a two-part blog with some background this week, and next week I’ll share recommendations if you’re planning your own adventure.
A week before our March departure, we received an email from our travel agent, Gate 1 Travel, telling us our cruise ship was stuck in the Strait of Hormuz. Translation: your trip might not happen.
Three days later, they gave us two options: cancel and get a full refund, or accept a revised itinerary: four days in Crete.
We went.
I refuse to let bullying politicians dictate whether I get to walk in the footsteps of my ancestors.
The trip itself? Smooth, except for the weather, which seemed determined to test our resolve. Intermittent downpours followed us as we climbed mountains in the cold. Where was Zeus when we needed him?
Storm clouds over the Parthenon, 25 March 2026, Photo by Lori Samuelson.
We made our way through Athens, climbed the Parthenon, continued on to Olympia, then Delphi where I picked up a cough that I chose to ignore, and on to Meteora. From there, back to Athens and a short flight to Crete.
And that’s where things got… strange.
I swear our hotel room in Crete was haunted. The first night, I had vivid, unsettling dreams. When I woke, my side of the mattress was halfway off the bed. I had to wake my husband to help fix it.
The next night? His turn. Same thing, odd dreams, followed by a thud as he hit the floor. His mattress was halfway off as well.
We’ve been married over fifty years. This has never happened. Not once.
Sahara Dust Storm before it got worse – seriously! Photo by Lori Samuelson, Crete, 1 April 2026.
Then came day three: a Sahara dust storm. Apparently they happen about three times a year, but this one, on April 1st, of all days, was next level. Nature’s idea of an April Fools joke.
Housekeeping had left our balcony door open.
We came back to a room coated in fine orange dust. My cough worsened, my eyes started itching and watering, and breathing became… challenging. My husband? Completely fine.
So now we know; I’m apparently allergic to the Sahara. Who knew?
Sahara Dust Storm when it went to white out? (red out?) conditions, Photo by Jim Samuelson, Crete, 1 Apr 2026.
Here’s the part that still gives me pause. Had we stayed on the cruise, we were scheduled to be in Santorini that same day. Cruise ships can’t dock there, so passengers rely on ferries and with that weather, those ferries wouldn’t have run.
We would have been stranded. No hotel. No luggage. No backup plan.
So… should I thank those bullying politicians?
Nope. Still not doing it.
One of the highlights of the trip was meeting a probable cousin at a small taverna in Crete. She’s a student at the University of Crete, originally from Kos and she looked exactly like me fifty years ago. Same dark hair, same eyes, same build. It startled my husband more than a little. She is even majoring in an area I did.
Maternal genetics don’t mess around even though I’m unable to prove we’re cousins.
The next day we flew to Kos Island, where I had booked a half-day tour through Travelocity. The company happily charged my credit card back in December and then never showed up.
Fortunately, the staff at the Kos Aktis Art Hotel stepped in and found a replacement: a wonderful guide from UniKos Tours.
He took me to what had once been vineyards, very likely the same land my family worked generations ago. Today, it’s a gypsy camp. The residents didn’t mind me taking photos, which felt like a small but meaningful connection to the past.
From there, we visited the Asklepieion of Kos, walked the mountainside associated with Hippocrates, stood beneath the tree where he is said to have taught, explored two medieval castles, stopped at Aphrodite’s temple where the sky promptly opened up and drenched us and found a perfect place to watch the sunset from a mountaintop.
It was, in a word, extraordinary.
Our return home, however, was anything but.
Parthenon at Night. Photo by Lori Samuelson 25 March 2026.
By then, my cough had worsened and my eyes were constantly watering. We spent a sleepless night in the Athens airport before flying to Munich (2.5 hours), waiting two more hours, then enduring a 9.5-hour flight to Chicago. After that? Two hours navigating customs and security, then sprinting to catch our final 30-minute flight to Fort Wayne. We made it with 23 minutes to spare.
Then came the 40-minute drive home.
Happy Easter.
Easter Monday was spent going from doctor to doctor in Auburn. No one had seen a “Sahara dust storm victim” before, which didn’t inspire confidence. My physician child kept telling me to just ask for allergy meds, but no one would listen. I kept getting sent somewhere else.
I finally landed in an eye doctor’s office, someone who actually knew what they were looking at, and I’m now on the mend.
Several locals have told me they’d never travel the way I do, for fear of getting sick.
I’d do it again tomorrow.
Life is what you make of it. Fear doesn’t take you anywhere worth going.
Next week, I’ll answer some of the questions I’ve been getting about traveling to places a little off the grid.
Oh, technology. You love it when it works and you despise it when it fails.
I recently had a failure that stopped me cold, even though I was absolutely certain I had done everything right. I’m sharing what happened so you can avoid making the same mistake.
My number one rule has always been to back up. And I do. Religiously. But sometimes, even that isn’t enough.
I was working on Volume 5 of Echoes of Britannia when I realized it had grown too large and really needed to be split. I saved Volume 5, made a copy on my desktop, and renamed that copy Volume 6. Then I opened Volume 5, deleted the material that would live in Volume 6, saved, and closed it. Next, I opened Volume 6, deleted the material that belonged in Volume 5, saved, and closed that file as well.
That evening, I saved both files to Dropbox and to a standalone external hard drive.
All seemed right with the world. Sure.
Three weeks later, while working on Volume 8, I became confused about a pedigree and reopened Volume 6 to double-check a spouse. That’s when I noticed something was wrong. The footnote I was looking for was gone. In fact, nearly three-quarters of the footnotes in Volume 6 were missing.
I refused to panic. Surely it was just the way Word had loaded the document. I closed it without saving and reopened it.
Nope. Still gone.
No worries, I told myself. I’ll just open the Dropbox version.
The footnotes were gone there, too.
That actually made sense, every night I saved over the same files. But Dropbox keeps deleted versions for thirty days, right? Except…there was nothing to restore. Why? Because I hadn’t deleted the file. I had saved over it using the same filename. The old version was overwritten, not archived.
At this point, panic started to creep in but I reminded myself I also saved everything to a standalone hard drive. Surely that would save me.
It didn’t.
About a week and a half earlier, I had uploaded the entire folder to the drive, overwriting those files as well.
Now I was panicking and I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. So I did the sensible thing: I turned to Geni, my trusty ChatGPT research assistant.
After I explained the situation, he calmly told me the truth: there was no way to recover what was lost.
Then, cheerfully, he added that it wasn’t so bad. I’d written it once, so I could write it again.
OMG. No. That was the last thing I wanted to hear.
Let’s just say you were lucky you weren’t at my house at that moment. I railed against the universe. How dare this happen when I had been so careful, so diligent, so responsible?
And then, right in the middle of that fury, it hit me.
Geni might have the footnotes.
Here’s something I didn’t fully appreciate until that moment: he did. Almost all of them.
As I wrote these volumes, I frequently turned to Geni with a skeleton narrative and uploaded my research finds. My prompt was always the same: “Write a short, tight, engaging narrative with Chicago-style footnotes from the information I provide, with no subheadings or conclusions.”
Using the chat search feature, I was able to locate most of those narratives. Rebuilding the footnotes wasn’t instant but it was possible. It took three full days to reattach everything, but that was infinitely better than starting from scratch.
Eight narratives were missing footnotes. Geni explained that saved chats can sometimes be lost during system upgrades, which may account for those gaps. He also gently pointed out something else I shouldn’t be doing: I tend to write very long chats. The longer the chat, the more likely parts of it may become difficult to retrieve later.
Lesson learned.
I now know that when I save files to Dropbox or to an external drive, I must rename them every time so they don’t overwrite earlier versions. Backups only work if the history survives.
AI has been a wonderful partner in my genealogy work over the past two years, but it never occurred to me that it might become the one place where my work still existed when everything else failed.
I’m pleased to share that I’ll be presenting a workshop at the National Genealogical Society Conference: WS01 Starting Smart with AI: Hands-On Tools for Family Historians, and I’d love for you to join me.
This session is designed to be practical and immediately useful, focusing on real examples, hands-on tools, and strategies that help family historians integrate AI thoughtfully into their research and workflow. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to refine how you use these tools, you’ll leave with ideas you can put into practice right away.
If you’re interested in attending, you can register using my personal referral link and code below:
I hope to see some familiar faces in Fort Wayne, Indiana on 26 May, 9:00 AM–12:00 PM. Feel free to share this with colleagues or anyone interested in genealogy, research methodology, or practical AI applications.
There was a recent public discussion about artificial intelligence and genealogy that left me thinking, not emotionally, but analytically, about where our field is right now.
What struck me most was not what was said, but what wasn’t.
Several audience questions centered on whether AI should be used at all, or when AI might someday be capable of returning source citations. Those questions are revealing. They suggest a community still waiting for permission, still assuming capability lies in the future, and still being told to fear a tool that many genealogists are already using responsibly and effectively.
More concerning, however, were moments when concrete ethical scenarios were raised and no clear ethical line was drawn. When real examples involve other people’s data, living individuals, or derivative work, “it depends” is not guidance. It’s abdication.
Genealogy does not function well on ambiguity alone. Our work affects real families, real identities, and real relationships. Ethical frameworks only matter if they are applied when it’s uncomfortable to do so.
Silence is data. So are the questions we choose to answer and the ones we avoid.
What this discussion confirmed for me is something I’ve been observing for months: much of the leadership around AI in genealogy is stalled. Not because the technology is unknowable, but because decision-making feels risky. Talking is safer than teaching. Warnings are safer than methods.
The work, however, is already happening, quietly, responsibly, and outside the spotlight.
And that’s where I’ll continue to focus my energy.
Possible Post Office Locations in Downtown Indianapolis
This is the last in a series on my adventures obtaining family records for dual citizenship. You can read early posts here, here, here, and here.
We had tried to get family documents from Illinois and Indiana in person and used email to obtain records from Florida and Arizona. Unbelievably, the online records had already been mailed to me while I tried to obtain the in person ones. Why? Because some states are more efficient then others. Illinois & Indiana, not so much.
We decided to drive two hours south east to acquire my father’s birth record in Mercer County, Ohio. The clerk was warm and welcoming which was such a change from our experiences elsewhere. A problem surfaced quickly; the record for my dad in their computer claimed he had been born in 1939. Umm, no, he would have been the youngest enlistee in World War II if that was the case. I had a copy of the birth and death certificate which I shared with the clerk. She couldn’t print a certified copy because whoever had input the information into the computer had made a typo. She went to search for a hard copy and found it. It was dated 1939. I believe what happened is that my father went to the office to obtain a certified copy so he could get his Social Security card. The clerk handwrote a new one and when my father looked at it he likely informed the clerk she had added the wrong year for his birth. I suspect she gave him a corrected replacement but kept the error record in the files. So, whoever input the info wasn’t at fault.
It took over an hour and three transferred phone calls to Columbus for someone with tech knowledge to inform the clerk how to issue the birth certificate with the correct date. Meanwhile, others were arriving for records and I was surprised to learn that another person was also seeking dual citizenship.
With record finally in hand we decided to make an attempt to drop off the death records request that Gary refused to accept earlier in the week. So, it was back home again in Indiana. Sigh.
There’s no walk-in service at the Indiana State Department of Health in Indianapolis, and I knew that. What the website didn’t say was that you also can’t drop anything off. Still, I figured it was worth a try.
Two and a half hours later, we pulled into the very last spot on the sixth floor of a parking garage. $35 an hour. But hey, it was next to the elevator. Life was looking good.
Until it wasn’t.
Disappearing Buildings and Imaginary Signs
We couldn’t find the building. The address led us to a large office labeled Bank of America but surprise! It was actually the Department of Health.
Only in Indiana could a government agency masquerade as a bank to “save taxpayers money.” And if I were to complain to a legislator? I can already hear the syrupy voice: “Now ma’am, we did you a big, beautiful favor by saving that signage cost, see?” (They always say “see.”)
There were no address numbers on the building. We finally wandered into another bank across the street, where someone kindly told us where to go.
If I had known what was coming next, I would’ve turned around.
The Plexiglass Purge
Inside the “Bank of Not-America,” a lone woman sat behind a desk topped with plexiglass, an absurd formality, given that it was the only furniture in the entire room besides a circular couch off in the corner.
She did not smile.
“We can’t take that,” she said flatly after I told her I had completed requests for death certificates.
I asked why.
“We don’t offer customer service.”
Well, clearly, that must be the vital records motto throughout Indiana.
I explained I’d driven from the northeast corner of the state because Gary refused to issue the records and whenever I mailed requests, they disappeared into the void.
“We’re very backlogged.”
At that point, my husband, officially done, asked if he could sit down. She pointed silently to the one chair in what was once the vestibule.
I asked where the nearest post office was. My thought: if I mailed it from just a few blocks away, maybe they’d actually receive it. Silly me.
She offered to draw me a map. I handed her my notebook.
That’s when it got weird.
Enter: The Scowler
Out of nowhere, a man’s voice boomed behind me: “What can I help you with?”
Startled, I turned to see a tall man with a very unfriendly expression and a gun. Yep, it was an officer of the law. I had no idea he was even in the room.
I answered, “There’s nothing you can help me with.”
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.
He started yelling, “Tone it down! Tone it down!”
I wasn’t raising my voice. I hadn’t even been speaking when began yelling. But suddenly I could see it all: me, tackled to the ground, handcuffed, arrested for attempting to find a post office to send for three death records that the department who issues them refused to take.
The woman at the desk piped up, “She’s a nice lady, she’s not a problem.”
He replied, “I’ll handle this.”
Handle what? Was he going to walk my envelopes to the post office for me? Hand-deliver them to the Department of Health? Please, don’t tease me.
He eventually got bored and retreated to the sofa, where another officer sat watching the show with amusement.
Yep, fun and games intimidating an old lady genealogist. Karma, baby. Let it be soon.
The Map of Madness
The woman finished her map and handed it to me proudly, saying, “I’m not much of an artist, but I think I did a good job.”
I looked at it: three horizontal lines, three vertical lines, a circle, and three X’s because she “wasn’t sure where the post office was.” Also, she misspelled Washington. It had taken her five full minutes to draw this.
I stared at the page, silently. She looked sad that I didn’t appreciate her work.
I asked if it was walkable, thinking I could leave the car parked. “If you’re good at walking,” she said.
Not knowing what that meant, I asked how far it was.
“Maybe five or more blocks.”
Sure. We’d drive.
She said she should probably give me the address as well, there was another post office nearby, but she wouldn’t send me there because “it wasn’t very good.”
(Pretty sure that’s the one where all my mail has vanished into the ether.)
She had to call someone else to find the name and address of the post office she’d just drawn a map for.
I left, sad for the state of public service and even sadder that this was the outcome of my tax dollars.
The Last Gasp
It was now pouring rain.
I parked in what was probably an employee lot behind the post office and left my husband in the car in case it needed to be moved.
Inside: long line. No one at the desk. Classic.
Thirty minutes later, I sent off two envelope, each with certified requests for death certificates, destined for a building two blocks away.
Only in America can it take three days to deliver a letter that far.
It was scheduled to arrive on Saturday when no one is there to sign for it. Of course.
So maybe Monday. Maybe never.
And when it inevitably goes missing? I planned to take my receipt to my local post office, and they’ll tell me I have to go back to Indianapolis to get a refund.
At this point, I’m starting to think dual citizenship was absolutely the right decision. Even with all the hassles. Even with the yelling. Even with that map.
Next week, to begin a new year, I’ll post a a look back at the favorite blog posts selected by readers for 2025. Stay Tuned.
