{"id":3341,"date":"2025-04-05T14:49:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T14:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2025-04-05T14:49:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T14:49:34","slug":"ancestor-april-fools-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=3341","title":{"rendered":"Ancestor April Fools Joke"},"content":{"rendered":"
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AI Image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A page from the past drew her near,<\/em>
By chance\u2014or by fate unclear.<\/em>
In a deed to a brother,<\/em>
She found roots like no other\u2014<\/em>
And \u201cforever\u201d rang strangely sincere.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The limerick was written by ChatGPT as I had to share what had just happened to me on April 2nd. The universe played a very odd trick on me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began on Monday looking over all my accumulated research on my British families for my next family genealogy book I’ll be writing later this year. I was insuring I had all proof of relationships and had the correct identities as between my husband and I we have a lot of common names – Smith, Porter, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our people came first to New England and then to Long Island, New York before the end of the 1600s. I was using Familysearch.org labs to help and found some amazing records but I’ll save that for another post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday morning we had severe weather – hail, thunder, and lightning so I didn’t want to go straight to work on my computer. Instead, I lingered over coffee and read my email. I subscribe for free to the AmericanAncestors.org weekly newsletter. There was an article about a New York project to help transcribe recently digitized records to identify the enslaved. Sounded interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the storm passed I decided to just check out the project<\/a>. I randomly selected Records of Slavery-Town Records, Book 4, 1681-1712. I didn’t even bother to create an account, figuring I’d just do the minimum of three pages and then get back to my own tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I opened the database I noticed that others had already started so I didn’t want to begin where they left off, figuring they’d come back that day and continue. I randomly selected page 83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I almost fell out of my chair. It was a land record in Oyster Bay, Long Island from Nathaniel Cole to his brother, Daniel. They are my 5th great uncles!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One brother was giving the other part of his land to his heirs FOREVER. Now I know forever doesn’t really mean that – as the land was legally sold over the years but it made me laugh. I worked for a company that was headquartered near where this land was and one of my kids went to a university that was also close by. Gave me pause and the creeps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How in the world did I randomly select a page out of all the options and land on one that was my ancestor? I have no idea but I decided the rest of the day was Cole Day so this universe late April Fools joke on me just might yield some further info on that family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A page from the past drew her near,By chance\u2014or by fate unclear.In a deed to a brother,She found roots like no other\u2014And \u201cforever\u201d rang strangely sincere. The limerick was written by ChatGPT as I had to share what had just happened to me on April 2nd. The universe played a very odd trick on me! … Continue reading “Ancestor April Fools Joke”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1268,56,1051],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships","tag-cole","tag-long-island","tag-sychronicity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3346,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}