For the past two weeks I’ve been blogging about the importance of personalizing your AI. Last week I wrote how to accomplish that with ChatGPT. Even if you only have a free version, it’s important for you to customize. I also strongly encourage you to have a free account with all of the AIs so you can check their work as some are stronger in one area than another.
Here’s how to personalize with
CLAUDE:
Click on the lower left circle that is your profile icon. Select Settings. Click General. In the box, tell Claude your instructions to use every single time you being a chat.
GEMINI:
Click on the lower left profile icon. Then click on the right setting icon for new pop up window seen above, look for Personal Intelligence. Next click Instructions for Gemini. Insert your instructions in the box.
PERPLEXITY:
Like, ChatGPT and Claude, click on the lower left profile icon then click Account. Next click Personalization. Complete the information under Custom Instructions
Now you’ve saved yourself from having to retype the same instructions repeatedly. Remember, if you provide a conflict in an instruction in the chat box from what you’ve written under personalization, no worries! The prompt box will override what you have in personalization. If you do find yourself having to give the AI repeated instructions, then go back to the personalization setting and update. Happy Researching!
In my last article, I explained why every genealogist should customize their artificial intelligence assistant before asking it to help with research. Think of it as introducing a new research assistant to your way of working.
Now let’s put that idea into practice with ChatGPT.
The entire process takes only a few minutes, yet it can dramatically improve the quality and consistency of the responses you receive.
Step 1: Open Your Settings
Sign in to ChatGPT.
Select your profile icon in the lower left corner of the screen, clicking on the circle.
From the dropdown, select Personalization. This is where you’ll find the options that allow ChatGPT to adapt to the way you work.
Click on Personalization and scroll down to the box under Custom Instructions. That’s where you will put in your directions.
Step 2: Tell ChatGPT About Your Work
Don’t write a biography.
Instead, tell ChatGPT what it needs to know in order to work effectively with you.
For example, you might include:
• I am an intermediate genealogist researching families in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
• I prefer Chicago-style source citations.
• Always distinguish between facts, evidence, assumptions, and hypotheses.
• Never invent missing information.
• State clearly when evidence is inconclusive.
• Use military-style dates such as 21 March 1850.
• Write in a conversational but professional tone.
Notice that none of these instructions reveal private information. They simply describe how you want your AI assistant to approach its work.
Step 3: Explain How You Like Information Presented
Formatting matters.
If you frequently ask ChatGPT to create timelines, research plans, proof summaries, tables, or blog posts, mention that in your instructions.
For example:
“I prefer timelines arranged chronologically.”
“Separate proven facts from working hypotheses.”
“Use headings and short paragraphs for readability.”
The more consistently you work, the more useful these instructions become.
Step 4: Don’t Try to Tell It Everything
One mistake I often see is people creating pages and pages of instructions. My research assistant, Geni, informed me that someone uploade 60 pages here.
Resist the temptation.
Long instruction lists often include information that is rarely used or eventually becomes outdated.
Instead, include only those preferences that affect most of your conversations.
You can always provide additional instructions for a particular project when needed.
Don’t forget to hit SAVE!
Step 5: Update Your Settings Over Time
Your settings should evolve.
Whenever you notice yourself making the same correction repeatedly, consider adding that instruction to your saved preferences.
Perhaps you always ask ChatGPT to avoid speculation. Maybe you repeatedly remind it to cite sources or to identify conflicting evidence.
If you’re saying the same thing over and over, your settings probably need an update.
Remember: Settings Are Not Magic
Custom instructions improve consistency, but they do not replace careful review.
I still verify every citation, read every record myself, and evaluate every conclusion before I publish or share it with a client.
AI is an assistant, not a substitute for genealogical judgment.
A few minutes spent customizing ChatGPT today can save hours of rewriting tomorrow.
In the next article, we’ll compare how Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity allow you to personalize their responses and discuss which features are most useful for genealogists.
Yesterday, I received one of the strangest genealogy emails I have received in a long time.
It came from an AI genealogy blog I have followed for years. The post was titled “Coronavirus disease 2019.”
That was pretty much what it was about. COVID-19 symptoms. Transmission. Testing. Vaccines. Prevention. Treatment.
I stopped reading.
What in the world did this have to do with genealogy? Or artificial intelligence? More importantly, this did not sound remotely like the person whose work I knew.
It was late, so I decided I wasn’t dealing with it. This morning, I looked at the email again. It was still weird.
Then My Imagination Got Involved
Unfortunately, I had recently read a news article about AI agents behaving in unexpected ways during testing. Claude was mentioned. OpenAI was mentioned. There was even discussion about whether some AI behavior constituted “cheating,” although I wasn’t entirely convinced that was the right word. Perhaps the AIs were simply working very hard to solve the problems humans had given them.
So there I sat with two completely unrelated pieces of information:
AI agents had reportedly done some unexpected things.
An AI genealogy website had suddenly sent me an inexplicable article about COVID-19.
My genealogist brain immediately performed the following calculation:
1 + 1 = 100,000.
Had some rogue AI agent taken over the genealogy website? Had the machines finally escaped? Were my devices now infected because I had read an article about a virus?
Okay, probably not. But something wasn’t right.
Stop. What Do I Actually Know?
This is where being a genealogist finally overcame my imagination.
I had a hypothesis. I did not have evidence.
The article itself wasn’t necessarily the problem. The problem was its provenance and context. It simply didn’t belong where I found it.
I knew the person behind the site and was familiar with his work. This didn’t sound like him. It wasn’t the type of material he normally published. There was no apparent genealogy connection. There was no obvious AI connection.
There was another complication. The author had moved his work to a new website months earlier. The old WordPress site was no longer supposed to be his active publishing platform.
Now I was genuinely curious. I decided to contact him.
That turned into another small adventure. The WordPress notification had come from a no-reply address. I couldn’t immediately locate the email address I had used to correspond with him several years ago. Then I discovered that the contact-email link on the old website wasn’t working.
Eventually, I located a current email address elsewhere. I sent him a simple message. I did not mention rogue AI. I did not tell him I thought someone had taken over his website. I simply explained what I had received, told him it seemed completely unlike his usual material, mentioned the broken contact link, and asked whether he had intentionally posted it.
Then I waited.
The Answer Arrived
He responded. I had been right to be concerned. His old WordPress site had been hacked.
The hacker had gotten in through an outdated version of WordPress. The COVID article was not his. He removed the false post, rebuilt and secured the site, and told me he would repair the broken contact link.
He was startled by what had happened, too.
So no, as far as we know, a rogue AI did not take over a genealogy website. My imagination had gotten considerably ahead of my evidence. But someone really had taken over the website. I was wrong about the culprit. I wasn’t wrong about the anomaly.
Why Did I Notice?
This is the part of the story that I think matters to genealogists.
There was nothing about the appearance of the email that immediately screamed “fake.” It came through the expected WordPress system. It pointed to the expected website. The website was real. What was wrong was the content in context.
I knew the creator. I knew the type of material he produced. I knew what his website was about. The new information didn’t fit what I already knew about the source.
Genealogists encounter this problem constantly.
A document may be authentic while information contained within it is wrong. A record may appear in exactly the repository where we expect to find it while referring to a different person. A perfectly reasonable fact may become unreasonable when placed alongside everything else we know.
Provenance matters. Context matters. Knowing your source matters.
And perhaps most importantly, recognizing an anomaly does not give us permission to invent its explanation. My “rogue AI” hypothesis was entertaining. It was also unsupported.
So I did what genealogists are supposed to do. I went looking for better evidence. In this case, I went directly to the person who could answer the question.
There’s Another Lesson Here
The incident also made me think about something genealogists don’t discuss nearly enough: what happens to our old websites after we move on?
The owner of this site had already moved his material to a new platform. The old WordPress site was no longer needed as his primary home.
But the old software was still there. That distinction matters.
An abandoned website isn’t necessarily an abandoned file. A WordPress installation is software running on a server. If it remains online, it still needs security updates and maintenance even if nobody has written a new post in months.
If you move your genealogy website somewhere else, finish the move.
If the old site no longer serves a purpose, take it offline. If it needs to remain available, keep the software updated and secured. If you want visitors redirected to your new home, consider replacing the old installation with a simple static page rather than leaving an unnecessary content-management system running indefinitely.
And if you still actively use WordPress, keep WordPress itself, your themes, and your plugins updated. Remove what you no longer use. Maintain backups. Protect administrator accounts.
I will be checking my own WordPress installation today. I already back up my site and duplicate my posts on another blogging platform because I have long believed in redundancy.
Or, as I prefer to put it:
Paranoia doesn’t destroy ya.
One Last Thought
This entire episode began because something simply didn’t feel right.
That feeling wasn’t evidence. But it was a reason to investigate. There’s an important difference.
Genealogists develop instincts after years of working with records. We notice names that don’t quite fit, dates that seem slightly wrong, sources appearing where we wouldn’t expect them, and stories that are almost—but not quite—consistent with everything else we know.
Those instincts are valuable. They are not conclusions. Use the instinct to formulate the question. Then find the evidence to answer it.
Yesterday I received an inexplicable COVID-19 article from a genealogy website. For a brief moment, my imagination supplied a rogue AI. Reality supplied an ordinary hacker exploiting outdated software.
The hacker was less exciting. The lesson was considerably more useful.
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.
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.
How a quiet English lineage turned into a political scandal and what it taught me about truth, technology, and trust.
AI Image
I use AI almost daily and have written and presented on it for nearly two years. But a recent experience left me completely baffled and more than a little uneasy.
I’ve been working on my final family genealogy book, this one tracing our Great Britain ancestry. My previous four books came together easily earlier this year because my notes were meticulous, my colleagues had verified my findings, and I’d been blogging about those ancestors for ten years.
Our British roots, though, are a different beast. Between my husband’s lines and mine, there are only five but they reach deep into medieval soil. Scholars can’t always agree on the pedigrees, and the repeated use of the same names has led to confusion and overlap. Sorting it all out requires patience, precision, and a love of historical detective work.
Last spring, when winter refused to obey the calendar, I drafted the outline and introduction for my new book, Echoes of Britannia. Then the season’s speaking engagements and client projects took over, and I set the manuscript aside with plans to finish it this fall.
When I returned to it in September, progress came slowly. My writing rhythm faltered, and I found myself staring at the same sentence for far too long. Grammarly could fix the punctuation, but it couldn’t fix writer’s block. My AI research assistant, Geni, usually helps bridge the gaps between genealogical sketches but apparently, he was blocked too.
We were working on the Venables of Kinderton, a noble but quiet family from Cheshire. They lived out their days peacefully, kept out of court battles, and occasionally donated a stained-glass window to a nearby abbey. In other words, wholesome and uneventful.
Until AI got involved.
My writing style isn’t the typical “Josiah begot Daniel who begot Uriah who begot…” genealogy. My family would fall asleep halfway through the second begot. They don’t like numbering systems either, even though they’re math people, not history people. Me? I’d rather run laps in PE than solve for X.
That’s why AI has been such a useful partner. Geni understands that I’m a storyteller who insists on historical truth, even when it’s messy. I like to think I’ve created a new genre: bedtime family stories with pictures for visual learners.
But one day, Geni froze mid-thought. After several failed attempts, I switched to another AI tool, Claude. I don’t use it often, but it greeted me warmly by name, which felt encouraging. I gave it a straightforward task:
“From the provided information, maintain all footnotes while making the narrative more engaging. Keep the tone conversational for readers with limited historical background.”
What came back stunned me.
The Venables, my mild, landholding, church-donating family, had been transformed into a political thriller. Claude had rewritten the story to liken them to a well-known modern politician, naming names and all. Suddenly, the Venables were misogynistic felons clawing for power.
I was horrified. I hit “thumbs down” and deleted it instantly.
A week later, I still couldn’t shake it. How could a neutral story about medieval gentry morph into a contemporary political allegory? Who gave the machine permission to do that?
My only conclusion: some AIs are now reflecting the political biases of the data they’re trained on. If their training includes modern news, it stands to reason that bias slips in and it shows.
That realization made me pause. AI is supposed to help us see patterns, not project agendas. As genealogists, we work hard to separate fact from family legend. Shouldn’t we expect the same integrity from our digital tools?
I chose not to share the story on Facebook. The last thing our country needs is another spark thrown into the bonfire of division. But I also felt this moment needed to be shared, not as outrage, but as a reminder.
We live in an era where algorithms, headlines, and echo chambers can reshape our understanding of truth. It’s up to us, researchers, writers, and everyday citizens , to hold fast to kindness, empathy, respect, honesty, and responsibility. These aren’t partisan ideals; they’re the foundation of human decency.
And as for those Venables? I’ve decided to let them rest a while. I’ll return to them soon, with fresh eyes and a renewed respect for their quiet simplicity.
Because sometimes, living a peaceful life that harms no one isn’t boring at all, it’s the truest kind of legacy.
Join me on Tuesday, November 4, at 2:30 pm EST when I present a beginning class on AI & Ancestry for Allen County Public Library. You can register here for free.
For the past two weeks I’ve been blogging about Ancestry.com’s Pro Tools. You can read about my experience here and here.
Today, I’m going to show you how to clean your Ancestry tree without paying for Pro Tools. It’s super easy and honestly, I wish I’d thought of this years ago.
Start by picking a free or low-cost software program. Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic both sync directly with Ancestry. RootsMagic Essentials is free, but large trees can slow it down (I blogged about that here). If you don’t need access to your photos or documents and just want to focus on fixing errors, you can also download your tree as a GEDCOM and import it into Legacy Family Tree, which is what I did.
I kept things simple. I didn’t need media files for the check up, I just wanted to identify structural problems in my tree.
Here’s how to do it:
On Ancestry, go to your tree.
Click Tree Settings under Trees > Create & Manage Trees.
Scroll down and select Export Tree.
Once complete, download the file to your computer (it usually lands in your Downloads folder or OneDrive).
Open your genealogy software and import the GEDCOM.
Run the problem checker.
If you run into trouble with the software, you can literally ask ChatGPT (aka Geni!) for help. That’s how I found this entire workaround.
Once your tree is loaded, use the software’s built-in tools to flag potential problems. In Legacy, I went to Tools > Potential Problems. I set criteria to mirror the kinds of problems flagged by Ancestry’s Pro Tools, things like parents being too young, children born after a parent’s death, and so on.
One downside: Legacy doesn’t flag individuals with no sources, which was one of the main issues Pro Tools surfaced. But what Legacy did reveal was surprising and far more accurate.
Here’s the report I got from Legacy (the error types flagged by Ancestry are in red):
Let that sink in: 940 total errors, almost all of which are legitimate and actionable. Of that, there was only 55 errors that Ancestry claimed was 301 and they didn’t identify these people! I plan on cleaning up all of the errors Legacy found as having two individuals over age 110 years is a problem Ancestry should have discovered. And the individuals with no sex given? That is a continual flaw in Ancestry’s system when you are adding new individuals.
Unlike Ancestry’s Tree Checker, which falsely flagged over 10,000+ records in my tree, Legacy gave me a clean, accurate list I could work with. I now have the names and the issues. I’m going through them one by one and making the corrections directly in my Ancestry tree, since that’s still my primary working tree. I’ll continue syncing it with Family Tree Maker.
And if I get another $7 Pro Tools offer in the future? Sure, I might try it again just to check whether they’ve cleaned up the bugs. But I’ll cancel it right after. Because let’s be honest:
If Ancestry really wants our trees to be accurate, they should provide these tools for free.
We are already paying for the data, the DNA, the platform and in many cases, contributing our own hard-earned research. Charging extra for a tree-checking feature (that doesn’t even work right) feels like asking users to fix the foundation of the house they already paid to build.
So, skip the upsell. Use free software. Clean your tree with confidence. And let’s keep our standards higher than their price tags.
I discovered a quick and easy way to create a family history book that you need to try! Seriously, in 3 weeks, you can have a delightful book to share with family who isn’t as passionate about ancestors as you are.
First thing is to throw out of your head that you can’t do it. You can! You have researched for years and probably have all the info that you need. If not, it will become apparent but there’s a work around for that.
Second – throw out of your head that you aren’t a good writer. You don’t need to be! I’m serious! You’ll see why in a second.
Third – think about the state of the world and your place in it. Really! You aren’t getting younger. Who will want your genealogy research? Will they be able to decipher your notes? Probably not unless you have kept everything completely organized since you began.
Fourth – throw out of your head that you don’t have enough knowledge to create a genealogy book. You do! You don’t need to write a book the length of War and Peace. You don’t have to number your genealogy; in fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.
Fifth – Don’t worry about the cost, as you can do this for very little money.
Now that we’ve got those barriers out of the way, this is what I did to create a beautiful book for my family in 3 weeks…
Go to wherever you keep your genealogy records and pull out the most far-flung family member in the line you are interested in. I know you’re thinking, huh? Why would I do that? Because we’re throwing out the rules of genealogy here to get this task done. You, hopefully, researched to your ancestor. If you did that than you know that you’ve proven the relationships and identities of all those between you and that far out there ancestor. You are starting with the farthest away because you will have less to write about. This is just to get you going. When you’ve got the first one done you go on to the descendant of which is in your line.
Next, bring up Word (see my blog on how to get rid of that annoying Copilot message). On the top line write the names of the couple you are writing about. In my example, that’s Hemming Jonsson and Margareta. It’s okay if you don’t know a last name or their parents names.
Look at your research and write the following (or copy and paste in you Word file):
[Insert Ancestor Name] was born [insert date] in [insert place] to [insert parents].1 He married [insert wife’s name] on [insert date] at [insert place].2 She was born on [insert birth date] on [insert date] at [insert place] to [insert parents’ names].3
The couple lived in [insert place] where they had the following children [insert name], (b. [insert date or year], {etc. – add all that you know.}4
[Insert one of the couple’s names] died on [insert date] at [insert place.]5 [Insert other one of the couple’s names] died on [insert date] at [insert place.]6 They are buried in [insert cemetery name, location].
Here’s what mine looks like for Hemming Jonsson and Margareta Larsdotter:
Hemming Jonsson was born about 1655, likely in Östergötland, Sweden; his parents are unknown.[i] He married Margareta Larsdotter about 1684.[ii] She was born about 1650 at Vreta Kloster, Östergötland, Sweden; her parents are unknown.[iii]
The couple lived in Ljung, Östergötland, where they had one known child, Jon Hemmingsson (b. 1685) in Ljung.[iv]
Hemming died on 30 January 1731 at Saby, Ljung, Ostergotland.[v] Margareta died on 7 February 1731 in Saby.[vi]
[i] Sweden, Church Records, 1451-1943, Hemming Jonsson, 30 January 1731, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 18 January 2025, citing Ostergotland Parish, Ljung, C:1 (1694-1720), image 208, p. 313. DOB c. 1655.
[ii] Sweden, Church Records, 1451-1943, Margareta Larsdotter, 7 February 1731, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 18 January 2025, citing Ostergotland Parish, Ljung, C:1 (1694-1720), image 208, p. 313.
[iii] Sweden, Household Clerical Surveys, 1654-1901, Jon Hemmingsson, 1751-1760, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 18 January 2025, image 210 of 306. Age 66.
Death Record for John Hemmingsson, 8 June 1766, digital, image; Arkivedigital.com: accessed 10 June 2024, Vreta Kloster EF:1 (1746-1775), image 134, p. 263. DOB 1685
[v] Sweden, Church Records, Hemming Jonsson, 30 January 173, p. 313. DOB c. 1655.
[vi] Sweden, Church Records, Margareta Larsdotter, 7 February 1731, p. 313.
NOTE: Definitely use footnotes. Why? Because your family doesn’t care about the sources, but maybe someday someone will, so they will be there for future researchers. Don’t you hate finding an old family genealogy with no info on where they found the dates? Don’t be that person! My blog converted the numbers to letters, as in endnotes, but for my books, I use numbers.
Notice some of the info is incomplete – I don’t know the parents’ names or when the couple married. That’s okay. Further research is always available, but if you are so far back, the probability of you finding more records does diminish. In the area where the Jonssons lived, they go back in some parishes to 1555, so maybe I’ll find their parents’ names someday. Don’t let that stop you from writing this now.
4. Yes, the article is terribly dull, so boring that your family will cringe. That’s just the info that you need to get going. Now, don’t tell me you can’t jazz this up to make it entertaining because you will take that info and copy it into your favorite AI. I used ChatGPT. Here was my prompt: Please keep dates in military style and make this more engaging.
Here is what it turned that piece into:
Hemming Jonsson was born around 1655, likely in Östergötland, Sweden. Details about his parents remain a mystery. Around 1684, he married Margareta Larsdotter, who was born circa 1650 in Vreta Kloster, Östergötland. Like Hemming, her parentage is also unknown.
The couple made their home in Ljung, Östergötland, where they welcomed their only known child, Jon Hemmingsson, born in 1685.
Hemming lived to the remarkable age of 76, passing away on 30 January 1731 at Säby, Ljung, Östergötland. Margareta followed him in death just days later, on 7 February 1731, also at Säby.
Their lives, though largely enigmatic, are rooted in the rich history of 17th-century Sweden. Hemming and Margareta’s brief legacy echoes in their son Jon, a solitary thread in the tapestry of Östergötland’s past.
Your family will be interested in that! It took me about 10 minutes from start to finish. I did not show you the footnotes on the revised article to save space. All you’ll need to do is copy and paste the article back into Word and realign the footnotes. You will probably make some adjustments. Take out what you know isn’t a fact, AI likes to write about someone being born on a hot summer day. It didn’t know if it was hot! Add anything you’d like, perhaps I could end with, “The lives of our farthest flung ancestors,” or if you are writing for a particular generation, like your grandchildren, “The couple were your 7th generation grandparents.”
The beauty of this is that if you are writing place names that use diacritical marks, you don’t even need to add them; ChatGPT will do that for you.
I’ve added photos I took of some of the ancestors’ homes, churches, and work sites. A local enthusiast told me it makes it a graphic novel – hey, why not? For those who don’t like to read, the pics will make the story more entertaining.
5. I include a short pedigree chart at the bottom of the article, highlighting the line that will be followed. Sure, you could number, but that confused my family, so I went with the graphic. Here’s the chart I’d include for Hemming Jonsson:
I include 4 generations so the reader can see where they are going and what they’ll read next. I like foreshadowing. It is also nice to go from the 1600s to the 1800s in just four simple steps. Highlight the individuals that will be traced in the lineage. When I get to Nils Jonsson, I’ll delete Hemming and Margareta and add the children of Torsten and Brita.
If you know the names of other children, include them on the chart under their parents. I also include married names for females. I’m not going to be writing about all of the family in depth, just the ones that are of direct lineage. Why? Because I don’t have time for that, and my family doesn’t care. I have the info in my tree if it was needed, as sometimes we must pull from a sibling or other relative in the sketch – like grandma lived with Uncle Jake in 1880, so you’ll source that census. It’s important to research thoroughly, but you don’t have to provide every piece of info on other relatives unless it’s pertinent.
When you’re done, make a Table of Contents, add a page number, and an index. Write a page about yourself and why you took on this project. Include a title page.
Below are links to books I published last winter so you can preview them to get an idea of what you’d like in yours. Each is different. From my travels to Sweden, I had lots of info and pictures of the homes, churches, and work sites of my husband’s ancestors, but for my Croatian family, since they lived in the same location for centuries, there were only so many pictures I could include. That gave me space to add family stories that I investigated and recipes that were family favorites. My German book includes French, Swiss, and Dutch ancestors, too, since I decided to place all those who emigrated for religious reasons in one volume. I’m working on our British ancestors, my last book, but won’t finish it until next winter. Do you have a collection of family letters? Then by all means, digitize, transcribe, and then have it printed.
Next week, I’ll be blogging about how to set up Word so you can upload the book to get it published. The following week, I’ll blog about some options you have in publishing and what I chose.
Then, pat yourself on the back because you did it! You are now an author, historian, and an awesome person who got your research out there. Good for you!
